Honey
by Coco-Minu
Summary: After thirty kisses, he loved the taste of honey. ShikamaruxIno, prompted oneshots written for the LJ thirty kisses community.
1. The Anybody

Summary: _Just like honey, Yamanaka Ino is an acquired taste._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I requested Nara Shikamaru x Yamanaka Ino, on LJ thirty kisses. Then strangely, my request was accepted! I half expected the community leader to be like 'No, you suck seeing as you only joined LJ to ask that.'

But anyway...the point is that it was accepted. Although I have an L x Misa and Neji x Ino (it won the poll, thank you to all those twenty-two or so who voted) the LJ thirty kisses theme one comes first. Although the L x Misa is near finished.

So, here it goes – my attempt at the LJ thirty kisses for Shikamaru and Ino. This is also to be posted on my LiveJournal, so please do not threat those who are reading this on there!

So, get ready for **Theme One: Look over here. **:)

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

_**The Anyone**_

* * *

He knows.

He knows that she knows that he's staring at her, just like many other men do. But it isn't because she's pretty, or deadly, or anything they usually think. Usually she's comfortable with his stare, because it's his acknowledgement that she is not just Yamanaka Ino. She's not a _nobody_, somebody that no-one takes the time to look at, or even glance in the direction of. She never has been, and never will be a _nobody._

Yamanaka Ino is a _somebody._

She's a runner, a joking pretty-eyed fake rebel whose legs carry her in any direction whatsoever until she simply feels like resting to regain her energy. Yamanaka Ino is a _somebody _because people care about her, they love and adore her. He doesn't always understand why, and he's pretty sure she never expects him to. Because she is a _somebody_, a person worth knowing and he is most defiantly _not_.

But she's like honey. Yamanaka Ino is an acquired taste, overly sugary and too sweet. Ready to be there when she felt like it, but not any other times because she did not feel inclined to be. Therein laid the problem. During the times she did not feel like being kind, she was the cruellest and most vindictive person he had ever met. She knew it too, but never bothered to make the effort to be even just a little kinder. Because there were no rules saying that a _somebody _should be nice to a _nobody_.

Nara Shikamaru is a _nobody_.

He's the lowest of the low, the smart and not exceedingly attractive male. He seems the most unlikely person for her to care about, the most insignificant person for her to even bat an eyelid in the direction of or grace with the beauty of her unearthly stare. He's the one that's nothing like her, not handsome like she is gorgeous and not flawless like she is perfect. He's not good enough for her, because she's something different to everyone. It's almost like she's not human, because nobody should look that good in real life. Only people in magazines are supposed to look like that.

For a _nobody _like him, a _somebody _like her is almost untouchable.

Notice the almost, because that was how this all started.

* * *

I, Sai, have been told that I am a _somebody_.

Because she likes to play with me, just as I like to toy with her back and we'll each keep playing until one of us falls for the other. Then one of us won't return the same feelings, and one of us will be broken. But she doesn't seem to mind, because she knows how it feels to lose and do it badly but still manage to pick herself back up again. She knows that I can't even feel emotion to begin with. Her eyes are glued to me half of the time like the eyes of others are glued to her, and I'm pretty sure that I know why. Sasuke was a _somebody_, and I've been told that I look like him a fair deal.

It would be logical if she had liked Sasuke. He was a _somebody _and so was she. They were good-looking, graceful, and powerful because you would bend to their will if it meant you could be like them. They were simply both popular, really. That was all it came down to, and in the end she hadn't been good enough for him because he didn't desire the same power she had. He desired something more carnal, the sheet instinct of cruelty and knowing that he could inflict pain. That he could kill, primitive as it was.

But personally, I don't think that either of them are all that great. Sure, Sasuke is powerful just as he wanted to be. Sure, Ino plays her mind games as she pleases. But with Sasuke, his power has no purpose. He can kill his brother, but it will only make him all the more a wander and even more the little lost child he always was. Ino can always play her mind games, but eventually the people she plays them with won't be so willing to participate. You see, adults can play games just as children can. But it's no fun if they can't get anyone to play along with them. I'm almost certain that she will end up losing at some point even if they do, because I know what she's like.

For a _somebody_, she sure is fickle. All it takes is a gentle push in the direction you want her to go in, and she'll follow it unquestioningly. Because no, she would never suspect anyone among her friends to try and hurt her. That would be unthinkable, silly, insulting – it would be just what Sakura had done, choosing Sasuke over her. She simply would not allow herself to think that something like that could happen again. So to me, although she's a _somebody _she's stupid. She needs to learn when not to fall. So does a certain _nobody_.

He hates me. He hates me for being a _somebody_, for being the one she adores. The apple of her eye that she dotes over, the person who she'll latch on to in the hope of a compliment or two being thrown her way. She loves attention, and he's not the one who ever gives her it. She thrives off of it, it makes her happy. Or it looks like it does, anyway.

So on one day, not one in particular I had decided to ask him.

"Do you hate me?" I had asked, and my blank expression seemed to unnerve him due to the fact that I was asking such a blunt question. He had been training with her that day, and scratches were lining his skin where she had thought it important to use brute force at some points. His vest was ripped in several places too, but at least it had stopped him from being dealt the worst of her blows. Though he didn't seem to think of it that way.

Training with her appeared to take tolerance, so much tolerance that it could be considered an art. Much like my own paintings and drawings, carefully planned and executed to an excellent calibre. But just like my own paintings and drawings, I could see flaws in it. She was vicious, bent on winning. Yamanaka Ino did not take kindly to losing, even in a fight that she knew could not possibly be fatal. Infact, I believe she hates even the idea of losing.

"No, Sai. I don't hate you." Is what he told me, and he sounded uncertain about it. His eyes had looked to his blonde team mate, complimenting a bashful-looking third member of their team in one of her nicer moments. I gathered the idea she was running on simply from the way her eyes shifted to mine and a menacing grin grew to go with it when she though I had looked away in discomfort. Give the impression that you're always available, even if for them you are unobtainable. Even if you know that you're too good for them. It makes something seem good in their lives. That is, until you turn them down. Did she have no sense of morality or decency whatsoever?

Although he told me he didn't hate me that day, I was pretty sure he wanted to hate me. Or if he was not capable of that, he wanted to hate her. She would treat him just like she treated their friend Chouji. She would be perfectly adorable, wind him around her little finger until he bowed to her every whim like a well-trained dog. He wanted to, he really did. You could tell it a mile off.

But he couldn't bring himself to. He simply could not bring himself to loathe the seductive, wily creature that is Yamanaka Ino. I know why, too. Because although she is the way she is, spoilt and sadistic he's known her since they were both young and he's long grown used to it. Or so he likes to tell himself, I've heard the rumours.

But he still sat across the bar from me and her one night later that week, staring at me with disgust and her with some sort of unreadable expression I'm not sure that he even knows what emotion he wants to portray with.

Yes, he wants to hate me. He wants to hate me for being a _somebody_.

But at the same time, his eyes were pleading to both of us. It gave away every vague ebullition of anger and hurt that he wanted to feel, he was asking me to ask her and her to just do it. He wanted me to tell her to look over there, give one look in his direction. It didn't appear that she had noticed it yet, but sooner or later she would, I thought bitterly.

She knows that sense of desperation, the thought that she has a lot to outdo and even more to prove. So although just for that one night I wanted to unravel the rest of the mystery that Yamanaka Ino is, I couldn't stop myself from glancing at him in pity. I knew what he was thinking.

_**Look over here, Ino.**_ _**Just one look to show that you actually care about me, that I'm not just another one of your game pieces.**_

Yes, I had thought with an air of what was almost contempt, that's what he's thinking. She always boasted about the ability of being able to read the minds of her team members to the hag, but it did not seem she could do it as well as she thought. But perhaps I was wrong, I remember wondering, perhaps she does know his name and perhaps because he is her team mate it is something more because she's already looked around in the time I've been mentally debating this issue. A small smile was on his face, and he hid the smug thing away. He knew it was better that she approached him and not the other way around. The hair on the nape of my neck was still sticking up on end of its own accord, my hands aching and mind telling me to find a way to _**get rid of the nobody **_but I ignored it. I didn't really care about what Yamanaka Ino did.

Her eyes had met his, and all of a sudden it began to look that the entire time she had been sitting there she had been wishing for something that's been missing all along. It looks like she had been waiting for him, waiting to ask him to stay by her side. At least for that night. But even so a piece of me still aches, and although I still don't understand why I felt like that night wasn't going to be a night when some things I used to call dreams come true.

"Hey, Shika! Come and join us, eh?" She called out, the loud decibel count of her voice stinging my ears but that's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that he had following her instructions, coming over and taking the seat by her other side. She had been sitting in between us two, looking odd and out of place between two men but she doesn't seem to care. She likes to be different, because if that little piece of different becomes a trend then she's the would-be fashionista responsible for it. Making her seem like the village expert of the clothes department, not just the vanity one.

I didn't think I had ever felt like that before. Perhaps this is envy or jealousy, but I can honestly say I feel more hostile towards Shikamaru than any civilised man should ever feel to another – it was my strongest thought of the evening so far - especially just because he had just sat on the other side of the woman who was trying to carry a conversation with me before he had turnt up and everything had changed without me immediately sensing or seeing it.

So just for that moment, I had decided to let Shikamaru follow through with his reckless dream that seemed to be tearing me up inside. That whole time I'd been so innocent in the entire situation, so why did it bother me what she done? It was her life; she could live it the way she pleased. But even so, it had felt sickeningly wrong to close my eyes because in that split second I did something could happen. Then I had remembered that book I read some time ago before that.

All that time I had supposedly been a _somebody_ and I didn't even know the rules.

I had made it seem like for this entire night that I had nothing to hide, when the very thing I knew I did need to was right in front of me in plain sight. I really did have emotions, dormant as they were. Her games had woken them up, and played with them. All the while when I thought she'd just end up hurting and breaking herself like some kind of porcelain doll, because I thought that I had no emotions for her to play with.

But in reality, her games had worked perfectly and I'd been ensnared in her web of faked charms. Hung out, ready to be taken off and carved into another wooden doll for her toy box. Of course, there was that side to her that I much preferred that I'd seen her use around him before. The natural Ino, who laughed and joked around without any worries about her looks and who was always fairly argumentative. The real Ino was stubborn and bratty, but not to an extreme extent that a not even a single good thing could be said about her.

Then all of a sudden, she had been looking at him. Paying him attention, making sure he was okay. Making sure that he was fine, that with him everything was just perfectly wonderful and dandy. How long has she known him now? Since they were children? Their parents were close friends. I had frowned, and she still did not look around at me in an attempt to offer some mild form of comfort or even ask why the scowl was marring my usually blank face so violently. Then with some disgusted horror, I had found myself thinking it.

_**Look over here, Ino. He's a nobody, I'm a somebody. Why do you care more about him than you do about me? Show me that you actually care, that to you I'm not just another figurine you bought to play with simply because you were bored and wanted a new toy.**__** Prove it, Ino. Go ahead. All you have to do is look over here.**_

I could feel a roar like that of a lion who had lost they prey it had been stalking for hours, angry and agitated rising in my throat although it did not emit. Whilst they just sat there, now barely seeing that I existed. It made no sense. Why did I care what she done, this ignorant girl who chose looks over strength? This stupid, insignificant moron that seemed to care for her – why did I care what they done together?

Maybe I was terrified to even think why I now know it is.

"Sai, are you there? You look spaced out; maybe you should go home and get some rest." The last sort-of question sounded slightly more like a barked out order from a warlord, demanding although she probably meant it in my best interest. I couldn't bring myself to see it that way. It felt almost too convenient hearing those words, like she wanted to get rid of me. She wanted me gone.

_**You don't even want to meet my eyes, do you? **_

It was almost true, though probably for not the same reasons that I was so focused on that night. Her eyelids were drooping, she wanted to go home and get some rest. It was just an excuse at the time for her to go home and sleep, but make it look like she wasn't the tired one. Because it would never befit her to look tired, that was what people who were not so pretty done. Going without sleep would not only make her even more tired, it would give her dark bags under her eyes. But at the time, I did not see it like that. I thought that she was trying to get rid of me to spend more time with Shikamaru. Of all the evening, then came my most presumptuous and my greatest mistake of the entire train of thoughts that had ensued since Shikamaru had joined us.

"You don't like me, because I'm not really a _somebody_." I had said. She had looked at me as blankly as I looked at them everyday, probably confused. At the time I had thought she was simply too stunned to know how to reply.

"Sai, what are you on about?" She had asked, her cobalt blue eyes widening and her eyebrows both raising in unison to give the look of unknowing innocence that she had perfected too well for my own liking even now.

"I'm not like Sasuke. He was a _somebody_." Then I had left them sitting there, staring at my retreating back and probably wondering what in the hell exactly was going on. But that wasn't even the worst part of it because I know what had happened when I had finally but quietly stormed out for some unexplainable reason.

He was staring at her, and he knew.

He knew that she knew that he was staring at her.

* * *

Now, he still knows.

He still knows that he's staring at her, and that she knows that he's staring. She still knows that other men stare, and she still knows that his stare is different from the others. But somehow, she can feel it just as well as I can. It isn't the same difference that we can both feel him staring at her because of, it is for a strange, foreign reason neither of us know.

Yamanaka Ino is still a _somebody_.

She's still a runner, a joking pretty-eyed fake rebel whose legs carry her in any direction whatsoever until she simply feels like resting to regain her energy. Yamanaka Ino is still a _somebody _because people care about her, they love and adore her. He still doesn't always understand why, and he's pretty sure she never expects him to. Because she is still a _somebody_, a person worth knowing and he is most defiantly _not_.

But she's still like honey. An acquired taste. But now, she's even stickier and sickly sweet. Even more difficult to handle, she's somebody you still have to be careful with. She's still the most vindictive person I've ever met, and even after thinking all this over in such a short few seconds of my time that seemed like hours in my head. Because there are still no rules saying that a _somebody _should be nice to a _nobody_.

Nara Shikamaru is still a _nobody_.

But that doesn't seem to matter to her, and I suppose it never really did. I was just too ignorant (like she still sometimes is) to read between the lines and see what they were really like, and what the are still like now. He's still the one that's nothing like her, not handsome like she is gorgeous and not flawless like she is perfect. He's still not good enough for her (to me anyway), because she's still something different to everyone. It's still almost like she's not human, because nobody should look that good in real life. Still, only people in magazines are supposed to look like that.

I can guess what you think I'm going to put next. You think I'm going to put 'Still, for a _nobody _like him, a _somebody _like her is almost untouchable.' But you would be incorrect to make that presumption.

Yes, he still knows that other men stare. I'm one of them. I stare in jealousy because his stare is different from the others, just as mine is. She felt the change of his, and she will never see mine because whenever she decides to look over here at Sai, all by himself, sitting on the park bench all alone like a _nobody _instead of a _somebody _she won't see me. She'll see a young man, burning with rage that the guy who she is currently sitting on the lap of is not him.

She won't see the _somebody _that she used to think I was, when I called her Miss Beautiful and she thought it was adorable. She'll see a _nobody_, just another face in the crowd of people who are forever staring at her Goddess-like face and body but will never be able to come close to touching it like Shikamaru is right now. It almost makes me sick. But I make myself sick too, because by now I know that the terms _somebody _and _nobody _mean absolutely nothing whatsoever and it was really just that listening to the conversations of those little gossiping and backstabbing girls that hung around at the ramen stall in hope of something interesting happening when I couldn't feel anything that had made me this way. Or so I like to think.

Because with Ino, there is no such thing as being a _somebody _or a _nobody_, there never was and there never would be. To her, Shikamaru was one of the most precious things in her life. He wasn't just there due to fate, because so many people could use the word fate and to her there was no such thing. He wasn't just a guy she wanted to date because he was 'cute' or because he had far more money than he actually needed.

Shikamaru was now the one she was in love with, the one who was allowed to stare at her in that different (loving) way because she loved him too. To her, he was a necessity. He was like oxygen or water, going too long without them would affect her badly. Even lead to her death, infact. Too bad I never realised earlier, that I was too terrified to admit to myself the true reason I wanted to be a _somebody _just like I thought she was. The sole reason I thought she only saw him as a team mate or friend, nothing more.

Because just like Shikamaru, I love her.

Go ahead, laugh. I dare you. I deserve it. Each and every chuckle that rises from your throat to erupt, I deserve. Because I was stupid and childish and although I'm still eighteen years young I was still younger and very much more foolish than I am now.

He's kissing her again.

Me? I'm just sitting here on the bench, still envious. Still wanting to be him. So selfish that it makes me sick to my stomach, really.

But Shikamaru is kissing Ino.

A _nobody_ is kissing a _somebody_.

So I'm wishing that she'll look over here, just like she looked at Shikamaru in the bar when she invited him over. It was that night that he asked her to be his girlfriend, after all. Three years now, was it? Three years I had watched them do this, over and over until it felt like I could barely stand it any more. What makes it even worse is that I never realised all along that there was never a difference.

Making me neither a _nobody_ nor a _somebody_.

Making me just Sai.

Just Sai, who wants to be anyone.

Anyone she'll look over here at.

Anyone but me.

* * *

I brutalised Sai's character for the second time in my fandom writing – first in Kaiga Kanojono, and now this. I should feel bad, but the strange thing is this. I do not. He needs to get some emotions really quick, or he will never see how awesome he is!

Reviews are loved. :)

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	2. The Illusionist

Summary: _Her illusions had made him fall for her. Hard._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Thirty kisses theme two for Shikamaru Nara and Ino Yamanaka.

Get ready for **Theme Two: News; letter.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Illusionist_**

* * *

Yamanaka Ino hated magicians.

Ever since she was young, she knew they were all just illusionists like her. But she's always been better, because she can actually perform some kind of magic with her skills. She can read minds; she can enter them and even make a person kill themselves if she pleases. So why would she be interested in card tricks, pulling rabbits from hats and supposedly sawing in people in two? Simple answer really; she isn't. She never was, and never has the desire to be immersed in such idiotic and fake things.

She is a real illusionist, and compared to her and her father their 'magic tricks' are cheap imitations of the things their family knew how to pull off much more spectacularly generations beforehand. With just a coy slip of the right hand even in all the wrong places she can do better than those who call themselves masters, so she would never pay one attention if he asked her to spare a moment to see his tricks. They were obsolete, and she had been the one to replace them with something better to begin with.

Nara Shikamaru, however, liked them rather a lot.

Even when he was young, he became immersed in their tricks. They were illusionists like his father's friend, Ino's father but they had no logic behind their play. They frolicked to make their living, playing simple pranks that were actually quite interesting. For someone who relied solely on logic, they were not as fake as Ino believed them to be. Although he knew they were not actual magic; and no such thing even existed, they had no logic behind them.

That was why he cared for them. Logic was something that he based everything on; his deductions as a team leader, what was going on around him and anything far beyond and in between those. He could not comprehend some of the tricks they managed to stun their audiences with, the reasons behind them and sometimes how they had pulled off the trick to begin with. He always had the time to stop and watch some wannabe magic man show off his latest illusion in the street, although he knew they really were child's play and not all that useful as it was. Compared to the illusions his team mate, the daughter of his father's friend used, they were far less vicious and far less harmful to those who even saw a glimpse of them. Maybe that was why he liked them so much instead.

They reminded him of Ino. The female magician, warlock, necromancer, the witch – whatever words that could be used to describe her tricks, they were all related to illusion and some form of magic. He supposed it was because she was like magic herself. She would come and go in an instant, her moods flickering and her tricks more like torture, created to inflict pain rather than to entertain others. Though sometimes, he was pretty sure she found entertainment in her own cruelty, as it seemed she was the type to be a sadist. She did punch him every time he mentioned _the traitor_, but he supposed that could be for different reasons.

He guessed he would not like it if he had cared for someone so much and had never reciprocated. Especially if he had been as prideful as she had been at the time and still was. She managed to turn heads in the street with her stunning beauty, and she knew it all too well. She could break hearts in an instant moment of rejection, although she knew what it was like herself. He had said thank you to her rival, but never even spared her a goodbye. It was no wonder, really. He was tactful and thought logically, that much was for certain but his tongue sometimes did not stay in place when it was supposed to. She must of rubbed off on him or something after all this time.

Yet he found his thoughts swaying back to her again, thinking about magicians once more. She hated them, because their tricks simply could not compare to her own. He knew they couldn't compare to her tricks either, he could see it plainly. Her tricks used reason and logic, and if she ever knew that he thought of describing her as the female magician of their team she would use her own magic against him. In a rather painful way, at that. Because her magic was not always tricks, sometimes they were too perfect.

So although he liked the tricks the magicians used a fair deal, they did not compare to the illusions he hated that she could pull off. He had to admit it, because although he hated her illusions they had created a feeling in him that no trick a magician could pull off would ever do to him.

Her illusions had made him fall for her. Hard.

* * *

"_Watch yourself."_

_Shikamaru looked behind himself, only catching the scent of her hair that he could guess by sheer force of habit she was twirling the ends of in her pale, slender fingers. That natural smell of flowers and sweat was the only thing left in her place. That and her unstoppable giggling. She seemed to find something funny._

"_Ok, let's stop for now."_

His eyes slid open and he looked in his lap at Ino as her eyes opened rapidly, big and blue, blinking quickly before she smiled at him in a way he supposed was meant to be reassuring. It probably was for the children that she taught flower arrangements to in the academy, but he was a grown man who had known her all of her life. He knew when something was a good sign from her, and that smile rarely was. It was a part of her grin and bare it routine, the one she never knew that he hated.

"Shikamaru, are you sure you are ok with this?" She asked, her grin and bare it routine face changing to a worried look. He frowned back. There was no training he couldn't take; he needed to be able to do this. She had been able to do this with Chouji perfectly, so why was it not working with him? Maybe it was the simple fact he didn't want to follow her instructions. That was the most likely reason.

"Yes. I'm fine with it. Are you ok with it too?" He asked as he looked down at her, and she showed no sign of discomfort at his words. She folded her arms as she stared at him, watching his crooked smile form. He was lying, he knew it. By the looks of it, she knew that he was lying too. Years of being around him had made him as easy to read as the book of some nursery school children.

"You're not opening all the doors, and I think you know it too. You're a smart guy, and usually smart people admit when they have problems with some things so they can have help. You're not usually stubborn, so why are you lying to me?" She asked in a few breaths, and he could feel a lump beginning to form in his throat. There was no way he could tell her the truth, and although she did usually pick up on it right then he'd rather take the risk.

"I can't help it, Ino. There are some things in my mind I don't want anyone to see. Not even you or Chouji." He said lamely, hoping that would suffice. Not adding the 'infact, especially you' part he was thinking through in his head did seem a pretty good idea. She might take it the wrong way, and then explode with anger like she sometimes did when she was having one of her normal days. She was actually being surprisingly helpful today, perhaps because it was something she was so determined to have working well.

"Chouji had that problem too, but trust me. It wasn't as bad as he thought it was. I can't really say much about it, sorry. Although you probably already know, it's just a precaution. I promised him." She babbled, and he frowned. He could probably guess what a few of those thoughts were about, as he knew his best friend was just like any other man. But still, she didn't quite seem to understand. Some of those things he remembered, the feelings he had were not the things she needed to know about. They were the things he was blocking from her, but it seemed he didn't have the option in letting her see them anymore.

When you were on a team with a girl in hit lists across nine tenths of the continents that used military force known as the mind walker it seemed sort of impossible to have private thoughts. It had never been until now, because although she could share her own thoughts with them just as she had in the chunin exam to give Chouji the answers she hadn't been in any other parts of their minds. She hadn't even entered them, just passed the thoughts along really.

But the point was that even as the mind walker she hid behind a mask, and an ANBU one at that. She had never had to enter any of the minds of her friends, bar Sakura and Neji. After Neji, she had told him that she had decided not to try it again unless it was necessary. Like right now, for their training.

"Here we go again, Shikamaru. Remember – don't close the doors!" She beamed, making the sign with her hands once more and aiming it up at him before muttering a single word. He smiled numbly and closed his eyes.

"_You're in my mind again."_

_His thoughts came out as speech. She seemed to find it amusing that he had kept his mind clear of all thought until that time, as he had just been speaking. Thoughts came out louder, and she could hear both of them. So before then, he supposed he could speak. But now, he had opened all the doors._

"_Well done Shikamaru, all the doors are open. I'm off to walk around for a bit." She stated simply, and before he could grab the arm of her astral body she had vanished. He didn't like it when she used her astral body for him. It was fine for enemies, because it prevented her from being harmed most of the time. But when it was actually her, not able to slip between his fingers and do as he pleased like he had grown used to seeing her use years before he found that it was much easier to get he to listen to him when they were doing this training._

"_Just because the thoughts aren't behind closed doors anymore, doesn't mean I want you to see them Ino." He complained, his thoughts booming loudly again. He supposed he could do what she done, make his mind a bit more organised. She said hers had rooms; everything was at peace because she knew nobody had the some technique but her par her father who __would never use it against her. He had never used it from when she became five and had learnt to do it herself, and even then he had only used it as a practical demonstration. But that was Ino. Although he thought logically, his thoughts were a lot less contained._

_"That's old news, Shikamaru. You told me that earlier. Doesn't mean I should listen. Chouji accepted it, you need to do the same. Temari writes you letters, eh? I suppose I would do the same if I liked you as much as she seems to." She giggled, and he swore at her violently. She didn't seem to take it personally and soon screeched. He supposed it was for the same reason as he had just almost fallen over. His heart had thumped rather violently at her words._

'_I suppose I would do the same if I liked you as much as she seems to.' He thought, and before he could hit himself for thinking about those words whilst she was still in there he felt her release the grasp she had on his mind._

"Sorry." She said plainly, and although it sounded emotionless as soon as he was conscious again with his eyes wide open he could see her nails digging in the dirt beneath the grass nervously. She wasn't looking at him for a moment, and for the briefest instant he thought she knew. But she soon looked straight up again, beaming. Albeit not happily, he could tell when she was faking too.

"No, I shouldn't have got so paranoid. You're welcome to read those letters, they're not like the love ones you wrote to-" He bit his tongue, knowing that was a forbidden topic. Taboo. He was going to say to _that person _in reference to when they were at the academy to make her forget it, or to get her a little wound up so it was enough to make her disregard his aggressive attitude towards her mind reading instantly. If he was aggressive, it would show there was something to protect. She would have all the more reason to want to mess around with his mind, and the thought of her attempting to see his thoughts (the ones he would prefer to bar off from her) once more was giving him too much grief as it was.

"Don't worry. I just wanted to look behind some of those doors that I hadn't seen yet. I know they weren't love letters. They were about other things, all that examining and other stuff you both do." She smiled though thin lips, her voice in monotone. He just had to go and mention it, didn't he? He owed himself a second punch for that.

"Once more?" She asked, and he nodded in return. Her fingers lifted in the hand sign he now saw as a warning signal, and he heard the too familiar words escape her lips before he was in his own mind again.

"_I'm just going to check the last few doors. Then it'll be fine, you probably won't feel any discomfort with me being inside you mind." She smiled, disappearing into nothingness._

_It was no wonder the interrogation department didn't have much work lately. Anko had told him she had driven men insane, trapping hem in their own minds. Ibiki seemed to condone it, too. Some of them she didn't ask to open their thought and memory doors, she just charged in and smashed them down. Hardly anyone was able to stop her, they didn't know how. She done practically all of the jobs for the department now, she was Ibiki's protégé. Those two could have run the entire department by themselves with the record-breaking speed at which they were now managing to break people down at._

"_Ino, you don't want to enter that last one." He muttered._

"_You can detect where I'm going now, then? You're getting pretty good. But I really think that I do, seeing as you know that I need to for you to progress." She replied, and he barely managed to keep himself calm. When they got out of his mind, he had every reason to throttle her. Although he never actually would._

"_I can't detect where you're going, I just know the speed you work at." He replied, and she tutted under her breath loudly. She was thinking rather than talking now, she seemed to prefer the sound of her booming voice. Perhaps it gave her a feeling of power, a small kick she got out of messing with the minds of other people._

"_Don't throttle me when we get out, it won't be good for you. Control your thoughts; remember they're not private whilst I'm here." She replied, and although he knew he didn't want to be he found himself next to her at the final door. _

"_Stay out of there." He warned, and she looked around to smile at him as she looked through the open door. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him in with her. Her thoughts told him she found it impressive he had learnt to follow her that well without her showing him how to and without her entering all of the doors, but she was going to do it anyway. It was for his own good._

"_Is that me?"_

_It was both of them in the field where they were training now, when they were younger. It was the first time she had shown them her shitenshin, and Shikamaru had been the one to hold her body. She smiled at the memory of them both as twelve year-olds, laughing at his half-panicky, half-embarrassed expression. She hadn't been awake to see it at the time. _

_**What if I hurt her? She's pretty, but she'd kill me.**_

"_Looks like you had a crush on me or something." She laughed at the thought he had remembered from that particular day, and he felt his skin flush a feverish red. She didn't seem to notice, grinning at the scene before it faded and was replaced with another one._

_It was replaced with the scene of her birthday party the previous year. Her seventeenth. She was smiling happily as Sakura gathered all of them in a group to take a photo, and Kiba had taken a place next to her._

"_So Kiba, not every day you get to stand next to the birthday girl!" She had smiled, clearly hyped up with excitement just like a five year old. Though she was underage, it was probably more alcohol. That had been his thought at the time, but that was not the most prominent one. Kiba had whispered something in her ear in return, probably something lewd as she had gone a dashing shade of red afterwards. The glass that he had been holding smashed in his hand, cutting it badly. She had immediately gone to his aid, and he had stared at her for a whilst she healed his hand. She frowned at that memory._

"_You got hurt." She whispered, looking like she didn't like that fact at all. His thoughts from that moment came, and he wanted to hide in shame._

_**I'll kill Kiba if he goes near you again.**_

_The scene changed a third time to the festival the previous month, where she was standing at one of the stalls next to Sai, who handed her a large and very over-stuffed white teddy bear. He had been watching from afar, and his jealousy towards the artist had been immense. It was probably just a gesture he had learnt from a book, which told him that women liked to be treated in that way. They found it sweet and charming. __She had looked even more stunning than usual, the light purple silk of her kimono and her long pale hair down and hanging around her pretty face. It made her look like a goddess, from one of those picture books for children. Like she had been created to be that way, beautiful and untouchable. Like she was from a fairy tale, really._

_**What would you do if I told you **__**that Sai doesn't love you, and that I do?**_

He heard her footsteps walking away when he came around. He sat bolt upright, prepared to run and stop her. But she was already too far gone, and by the time he had stood upright ready to she had disappeared in a white cloud of smoke. She had gone somewhere, and that somewhere was far away because he couldn't detect her presence anymore.

Swearing at himself madly, he lay back on the grass and stared at the powder-blue sky. The clouds were floating across it peacefully, completely betraying him. Usually he liked to think of himself as calm, and when he was angry there were sometimes storms rather then just having them drift by as usual. But the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds, the bright rays giving warmth and happiness to those who based in them. The sky was a liar, the sky was a magician, the sky was an illusionist.

Yamanaka Ino was like the sky. The sky was temperamental and compulsive, acting on impulse. It was strong, but weak at times too. It was logical on weather reports, but it defied logic when they were wrong anyway. The sky was being logical now again. It was raining. Crying, even. Ino was like the sky, and the sky was crying. It would never listen to reason.

So he decided to write her a letter instead.

* * *

She looked down at the envelope in front of her with disgust.

Ino watched the thing carefully, half waiting for it to explode and half wishing for it to disappear from beneath her nose so that she would never have to set her eyes on it again. The off-white colour of it matched the walls of the hospital, and that was a place she did not need to be reminded of.

But because it was real and looked like it was no going anywhere, it was most defiantly not an illusion. She could pick it up, hear the paper inside it crinkling before she peeled open the envelope and actually read it. So she did so, looking at the scrawled writing that she knew all too well. It was almost so familiar it hurt. It was his writing.

_Ino,_

_I can understand if you want to rip this letter up right away, then next time you see me walking down the street or when we're training again you can pretend that nothing ever happened, that you never saw anything and that I never thought what I did._

A lump caught in her throat, and it was one she just couldn't swallow.

_But you and I both know it did. _

She felt as though she were about to be closed off from all possible ways of breathing. Sucking in the vital oxygen she needed now felt almost impossible, but somehow she was forcing herself to do it. Her fingers traced the next words that were scribbled down on the paper in black biro ink softly, taking them in.

_We both know I love you._

She almost cried, but instead felt a laugh rising in her throat. Insane, uncontained peals of laughter that rang out in the empty flower shop. She thought she was going crazy, but the letter was not an illusion that she herself had conjured up and it was not an illusion that Shikamaru had left there for her. It was a real letter that he had left. It was real.

_I once said I wanted an average woman. Neither beautiful nor ugly, who I could have two children with (a boy and a girl) then retire. But I was wrong. Because you're not average. You're crazy, insane, intelligent, loud and simply the most beautiful person I've ever met. I'm average, nothing like you. _

_So you're probably wondering why I love you. But the truth is, even I don't know._

_Infact, just ignore this letter. It was stupid of me to write it. I've ripped the past few (or dozen) to shreds, because I doubt you'd want to read them or anything. But Sakura looks like she'll punch me if I stop writing now. _

_So rip it to shreds for me. Go ahead._

The tears slid down her cheeks freely upon seeing the last words before his name. It was like they were screaming at her, shouting and crying just like she was that ripping it to shreds would be good for them both. It'd spare his heart. Infact, it was too late for that. She'd already ripped that to pieces earlier on.

She never even thought he could write something so caring, he barely even showed any signs of interest in a female other than those he knew. Even then, that was only the sort of interest she would think of as friendship. She never knew. She never saw it. Because they were friends. Chouji, Shikamaru and her. Best friends. They just were. They were never just Chouji and Shikamaru, Chouji and Ino or Shikamaru and Ino. Brothers and sisters, almost – but never quite. Because they were best friends, and best friends helped each other out. They always stuck together.

_Shikamaru._

She looked at the signed name of the man who had written it once more before crumpling the paper tightly in her fist, then running for her front door. Regardless of the fact her eyeliner and mascara were running down her face, her nails were caked in dirt from the plant pots and her hair at the time was beginning to frizz due to the humidity of the Konoha heat. It didn't matter right then, anyway. She needed to find him.

She needed to tell him it was her own fault. She hurt him, she knew that. She hurt herself, because she was so stupid and bloody ignorant despite him thinking she was intelligent. Went to show what geniuses knew really, didn't it? Despite the odd looks she was getting, she carried on until she saw the green grass of the field where the three of them trained.

She needed to tell him. Not wanted, needed. So she screamed.

"Shikamaru, for a genius you sure are bloody stupid! Why did you ruin everything, you moronic fool! I want you here, now! I don't just want you, I need you! I need you more than I need anything! I'd give everything up for you, and I hate it! I hate you for not telling me sooner! Why didn't you tell me? Because then I would have been able to tell you too!" She screeched, throwing herself at the ground, glaring at the clouds intently. He stared at them all the time, but the one time she wanted him there he was gone. Typical. She closed her eyes, trying to block out everything. Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps it was safer they weren't attached, because it could make problems. She knew it.

"Tell me what?" The whisper in her ear was warm, and she recognised the voice right away. She smiled softly to herself, almost madly. It might not be him. She might be going insane, because she wanted him there so much. He did say she was crazy. She'd punch him for that one at some point. He really needed to learn to give compliments.

"That I guess I love you too." She murmured, opening her eyes to something that defiantly was not an illusion. She almost stopped breathing. His face was hovering inches from hers, his eyes staring deeply into her own with such unhidden certainty that they were right for each other. It almost made her panic that he was wrong; that something was so wrong about them it would never be right.

But when his lips collided with hers, she knew it didn't matter.

Sometimes letters people receive are filled with bad news. To tell you that somebody has passed away, to warn you of things like bills that need to be paid, or to blackmail you into doing something you do not want to do at all. But sometimes, receiving a letter is not so bad.

If it's a good letter; it could even be a little bit of written magic from a magician. Ino had never liked magicians, but now she wasn't so sure. She was pretty sure Shikamaru was one. He didn't have cheap tricks, or rabbits from hats or anything else. Maybe he was an illusionist like her. She liked illusionists a lot, as she was one herself. She was surrounded by illusionists, and even if he was illusionist maybe he could still have some magic in him like a magician claimed to have.

After all, he had done some magic on her heart.

* * *

That last sentence was disgustingly fluffy, and Shikamaru was out of character. Blah.

Reviews are loved. :)


	3. The Electrician

Summary: _Ironic, really. Her ribcage really was a cage – for her heart, that was._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Thirty kisses theme three for Shikamaru Nara and Ino Yamanaka.

Get ready for **Theme Three: Jolt!**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Electrician_**

* * *

She had felt it for the first time.

That little jolt, creeping under her skin as his tanned hands brushed her own pale creamy ones for mere seconds, making her freeze up as the static electricity ran through her body. She had experienced the small rush it gave her afterwards, her heart speeding up immediately at pummelling around in her chest so roughly she thought it was trying to break free of the ribcage. It had an ironic name really, as it was a cage for her heart which it could not escape, no matter how fast it ever managed to beat.

The sudden rush of heat in the few seconds of silence when he began talking to Chouji about training with him then, now they were done practising her techniques and abilities. Although her heart cried out that she wanted him for herself, that she did not just want to sit and watch as time passed in which they fought one on one without her, she knew it was unfair. They had been working in a pair for a fair amount of time without Chouji, so why should she not be able to stand the thought of him being around anyone but her? Even their best friend, a male? One they had known for years. She just couldn't explain it to herself.

"Ino, are you feeling ok?" Chouji asked her, the concern in his voice evident. She beamed back at him, all thoughts disbanded quickly. She did not need to concern herself with such frivolous ideas of her own team mate actually making her feel so rushed, so _alive_. Like someone had tried to resuscitate her using just static electricity although she was still breathing. It was an odd feeling for sure.

"I'm fine, why wouldn't I be?" She replied, her straight and pearly-white teeth bared in a wide grin at her portly friend. He frowned back, confusing her all the more. Did he not see she was perfectly fine? It wasn't like she had hurt herself or something by just sparring.

"You're bright red. Heatstroke or something? If it is, you should get some water." He advised the female of their team, and she smiled at him again. She was nodding, but it did not appear that she was actually listening. It was almost as though she were staring right through him, like he was invisible even.

"Yeah, sure." She said, still staring right through him. He was starting to wonder what she was staring at; bearing in mind the only thing behind him was the third member of their team. The one she constantly complained about, saying he was lazy and chiding him for not always listening to her when she was telling him to put effort into whatever he was doing at the time. But Ino wouldn't be staring at him. It would just be strange. Right? She still looked as though she was staring right through him though, and she had not even worked up that much of a sweat in her spar with Shikamaru.

"Here, just take mine." He pulled the smooth metal canteen out of his bag, flinging it to her. She only just caught it, still seeming as though she was not really paying attention to a word he said to her. It was almost like she was a zombie, simply nodding and going along with whatever he said. She was never like that. It was odd, simply unheard of for the bold and loud Yamanaka to be so quiet.

She raised the cold metal in her hands slowly, taking a few sips. It seemed to make no difference, her gaze still averted at the male behind him who was taking out his hair and retying it. She seemed to be absorbed in watching his actions. Then he almost shouted something he had not really thought about.

"Ino, are you in love with him?" He yelled, and she spat out the mouthful of icy water she had been about to swallow. All over her purple skirt, as well. Such a shame, really. She glared at Chouji, the familiar blonde bombshell of their team finally looking as though she were back to normal again. Her face was even redder, but now it looked as though it were with rage. He felt like he was shrinking where he stood.

Behind him his best friend had looked around wildly, staring at the two with a calmed look on his face. His reaction had been faster than normal though, and Chouji had realised it. Probably because he was so protective of their team, and he didn't want Ino to end up heartbroken. _Again_. He stopped his thoughts there. Nobody needed to be reminded of that treacherous idiot. He never realised what he didn't have was so precious and fragile, needing to be nurtured so like a flower it could grow and be even more beautiful that it already was.

"I don't know what you're on about. Are you sure it's not you who has the heatstroke, Chouji? You don't look very well." She laughed, and his pale face returned to its normal shade. The reddish tint to her cheeks had faded, along with the rest of the shiny tomato colouring of her face. It was almost as though nothing had happened, although Chouji knew differently.

_Ino, you're a liar. You were blushing._

"Thanks." He muttered as she gave him his canteen back, taking a deep swig of the freezing water to quench the thirst he hadn't even realised he was feeling to begin with. Until she had said those words, that was. Maybe he was just seeing things, strained from the scorching heat of the Konoha sun. Maybe he was imagining things. Ino smiled at him, secretively and silently. No, he hadn't imagined it.

"Are you ok, Chouji?" She asked innocently, and he smiled back numbly. She was a filthy liar, a thief but she was still as beautiful as ever. He supposed she had to be, really. She was beautiful on the inside too if you were her friend, but it you said something she didn't like she knew just how to mess with your mind and make you think what she wanted you to believe.

"Stop your tricks, Ino. It's not nice." He whispered in her ear as he crouched down, handing the canteen back to her. She looked paralysed, her eyes wide as she moved her head ever so slightly to the side so she could only just see him with her sky-blue eyes. She tried to smile again, the worried expression disappearing in an instant.

"What tricks? I never did anything with your mind. It was your own thoughts. Men can destroy themselves with their own thoughts, Chouji. You should be careful." She hissed vehemently, a clear warning in her voice. He had felt it straight away, and he was certain the best friend of theirs behind them wouldn't hear his reply or her thoughts.

_Don't argue with me, you know you can't win._

"I'm just too nice to you, aren't I? Don't worry, I'll never tell." He smiled softly, standing up and moving away from the silent Ino. She stared up at him, looking as though it was starting to get hard to breathe for her in air so thick with smoke from the cigarettes of their other team member. Or maybe it was just that she was far too used to her privacy, to people never being able to read her true emotions behind the brave, bold, _beautiful _façade she his behind.

Unable to see that behind that cheerful, stunning mask that she wore so casually. It disguised her brains, and her skill as an interrogator and spy. As a shinobi of Konoha, able to hurt and even spill crimson blood on her flawless skin as she killed for the place that was her home. The place where she felt that she belonged, alongside her father, her teachers and her friends. Alongside Inoichi, Asuma, Ibiki, Anko, Sakura, and himself.

Oh yes, and Chouji almost forget another one of the people she knew best on that little mental list. The man who was watching her with dark eyes, which she was averting with her own blue sightseeing orbs as best as she could manage for the time being. The man who made her feel a little jolt of electricity, a little rush of emotion. The man who she had not yet told she was in love with him, although he supposed it was very likely.

Nara Shikamaru.

She tutted lightly at Chouji's thoughts, finding them slightly ridiculous. This was the first time she had ever experienced such a rush from his fingertips brushing her own. Scolding herself mentally, she also told herself it would be the last time. She was not in love with him, and she never would be. It would be stupid; it would be idiotic and _absolutely perfect_. She swore aloud, causing both of them to stare at her. Although she was loud, she rarely swore. It simply didn't suit her. She was not going to fall in love with Shikamaru!

_Not because of one silly little jolt!_

* * *

By the fifth time she felt it, three others did too.

Shikamaru felt the jolt at one of the same times she did, as they fed the deer his family owned. _Together_. _Alone_. Originally he had scolded himself for thinking it, but now he remembered it as a rather pleasant feeling. Not in the least painful, although it made him feel quite strange. He felt as though he were longing for something, but until he had felt it the second time when her long hair had flicked his neck for a few seconds he had decided it was nothing. Yeah, until that time. Then he had wondered why he hadn't realised until that second time what that feeling was. Then the longing he felt intensified every time he saw her, because he had known then he was longing for her. But she was too good for him. Out of reach, too far for him to reach out and shout his feeling at.

Unobtainable, really. So from then, every time he felt the jolt he treasured it. Harbouring his feelings in secret, even as they intensified. It was not worth the rejection by telling her, because he knew that she would. She could do better than him, and she knew it. He was just like a brother to her, he told himself. Just a pesky older brother, and to her it would seem almost like incest. Sick and wrong. But if she was his sister, the thought of incest didn't seem so bad. He shunned those thoughts for a long time after that, trying to see her as a sister. But it didn't work. As disgusting as it was, incest would always win hands down because he knew that she wasn't really his sister and therefore it wasn't really incest.

It was just that somehow, he had fallen in love with her.

As had another man.

Sai had felt the jolt when he had ran into her in the street, in a rush to get home and finish a painting he had started around the same time. Although one of the brushes had ink that had not been dry on and it had splotched her vest, it seemed she was having a good day (unlike the hag) and she wasn't as upset about being slightly daubed with ink like his team mates were. She had even helped him pick up his scattered things, saying it was her fault too for not looking where she was going. Not paying enough attention. Then their hands had touched briefly as she handed him back a paintbrush.

Sai had never felt anything quite like that. Thinking back on it, the word 'attention' had triggered something at the time too. The simple words from her mouth almost sounded as though they were pleading to him.

_Get me to pay attention to you, just like you want me too. Please, Sai, I want to! _

With that thought in mind as he got home, he continued his painting. It had been a picture of a small seating area, a fountain and a church in the general vincity along with empty wooden benches littered around the general vincity. The original idea was that it was a scenic painting, a place that was so stunning it could take people's breath away. But then, perhaps accidentally on purpose, he had managed to splodge a small dab of light platinum on the canvas. By one of the benches. He had frowned, not wanting to remove it although he needed to. By the time he had finished the painting, a girl was sitting on the bench next to a boy that very much resembled himself. They were smiling at each other, and if it were a real scene he would say as a viewer of it he would expect the boy to kiss the girl like his books told him most boys and girls did if they liked each other very much.

Raising a trembling hand to his lips, he realised the girl in the painting looked very much like Ino. Imagining her soft, plump, luscious lips caressing his own softly he felt a second flash of electricity run through his veins, a second jolt. Books would never lie to him, telling him that he was feeling something different to what he really was. Consulting them, he realised that his emotion was truly extraordinary and hard to come by.

He was in love with her.

Temari wasn't. Although Temari liked the girl, she had taken a rather larger liking to the man that Ino was in love with. It had only been a short time before she had felt the jolt too. All he had done was move his game piece. Her fingertips had brushed his retreating hand for mere milliseconds, but when her own hand moved away it was at a far faster speed. She had felt a rush of electricity beneath her flesh, running through her bones. It went to waste after a while, disappearing a few seconds later.

But the feeling came back frequently, just as it had done with Ino. It hadn't taken her long at all to figure out what it was. Her brother Kankuro had once said he had felt it, though not who had given him it – and although it was a long time ago – Temari still remembered how he had described it. It was just as she had felt, and at the time she had joked with him that he must be developing a crush on the girl he had felt it from. But now, she knew differently.

That little rush of electricity wasn't just showing a crush, it was showing something else entirely. It was showing she had fallen in love.

She had fallen in love with Shikamaru Nara.

* * *

But Shikamaru wasn't hers; she could feel it by the third jolt.

He was reluctant to spend time alone with her when he knew that she was not spending time with others, which was what he told her. But secretly, somewhere deep down a jealous liar in her heart told her that it was just because he wanted to spend more time with anyone but her. It was an odd feeling, cruel and cold. Sometimes it made her disgusted with herself, and with him.

Not dating. That had been what they had said, right, when Naruto had asked? She felt so idiotic when they had said that was not the case at all. Idiotic to think that anything like that would ever happen, the way Shikamaru had bluntly brushed off the comments. He had told her that he was going to find Ino after that, and although he asked if she wanted to come she had refused his offer due to her spiteful thoughts.

_Go ahead, run to your precious Ino. Tell her how__ you'd do anything for her, and you'll never come near me again if she doesn't want you to. Tell her that you love her._

With a strained smile at his retreating back, she had almost cried. Luckily, she wasn't wearing any makeup and as soon as she reached her hotel room she had luckily found nobody there. Throwing herself on the bed, she cried for the first time in years. It was so unfair. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn't. Because she was sure he didn't feel the same way. But Matsuri, that little girl Gaara had taught had grown older and seen that something was wrong with her. Being around her brother so often made her able to recognise his sister's changing moods, and she had whined until Temari had told her. She promised to keep it a secret (a dirty one at that, Gaara would probably be outraged) and told Temari that she was pretty, so it was ok. Who wouldn't want her? Temari had smiled, listening to the girl drone on about how she should profess her love to Shikamaru.

"But why would you want me over her, right? You wanted average. I'm closer to average than she is, I'm remotely pretty but she's not. She's beautiful. Nothing near average." She was talking to herself, trying to convince herself that he must had felt that little jolt too. Trusting a child's words would never be a wise decision, but she liked Matsuri. She was a nice kid.

"What's that? Another troublesome woman talking to herself? Twice in one day now, Ino was talking to herself this morning in her sleep." A husky chuckle came, and she recognised the voice instantly. She looked around behind her back, seeing the pineapple-haired man drawing nearer to where she was sitting on the grass.

"Shikamaru, do you love me?"

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and he appeared surprised. He smiled softly at her, a thin smile on his face. It looked as though he almost found her words amusing, and why wouldn't he? Like he could ever love her. Tears almost stung her eyes again, but she refused to let them fall. Before she could say anything, he spoke.

"Yeah, of course." He replied, and her heart leapt.

"Really?" She breathed out her worries as he sat next to her, watching the clouds float by without a care in the world. Lazy and never ending, not particularly knowing where they were going or where they even were at that moment. Hanging over her head without any worries, any problems. They weren't even human. It was such a carefree life, and at that moment she felt like a cloud until Shikamaru finished what he was about to say before she cut him off.

"You're a good friend of mine, I love all my friends. As lazy as people seem to think I am, that's what keeps me going. The thought that they would fight for me too." He explained quickly, and she choked on the words she was about to come out with. It would have been so easy to say them anyway, but not it would be foolish.

"You don't understand what I mean. Never mind, we can talk later. I have to go." She said in a rush, stumbling to her feet as he started to turn his head to look at her. She could not meet his eyes, walking away slowly. He wasn't going to stop her. He sat shocked, watching her walk away from him and away from what seemed like the idea of anything ever happening between them that would make them more than just two good friends.

_You love me._

"Temari, stop! Listen to me!" He shouted, far more energetic than he usually was. But he was so absorbed in getting up and running to stop her he didn't see a second blonde female enter the clearing with Sai, who had offered to train with her. He was too busy to see his own two team mates, grabbing Temari's wrist and pulling her around to face him. Her emotionless look was almost heartbreaking.

"To tell me what, Shikamaru?" She replied, the jolts rushing and buzzing in her body all at once as her heart began to feel as though it was jumping out of her chest and she felt so dizzy it was like she had been spinning around in circles for too long like she had done under the baking heat of the Suna sun with Kankuro so long ago. But then he said it.

"I'm sorry. I don't love you the way that you love me." He replied, and her eyes opened wider than they ever had. Something inside her cracked. Infact, it didn't just crack. It smashed and broke completely, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.

"Who, Shikamaru? At least tell me who, please!" She almost begged, her voice more pleading and helpless than he had ever heard it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the suspect running closer towards them to ask what was going on with the man who she thought was named Sai trailing behind her. She was prepared for the answer, as she knew it already.

"Ino. I'm in love with Ino." Shikamaru whispered. Temari froze in his grasp. The preparation didn't make the words any less hurtful to hear, because she felt as though she had known all along but somehow she couldn't bring herself to hate the girl who was now standing right behind him and had probably heard every word he had just said. She looked just as shocked as Shikamaru when he briefly looked behind himself to see what Temari was staring at.

"Shik-ka-ma-maru, I don't – I don't know what to say." She whispered, clearly too stunned to even notice the other two still standing there. Her large blue eyes, pale hair and pale skin almost made her look like a porcelain doll. Made perfect. For a brief moment, Temari almost felt envious. She herself had dark green, dusty blonde and dark tanned skin. It almost made her seem like a thorn compared to the rose that Ino was. She waited for Ino to reject Shikamaru, almost begging for it as cruel as it was by staring at the other woman. But her eyes did not meet Ino's, and her lips began to tremble. She had never heard Ino stutter before. It was so unlike her usual loudness.

"Say that you love me too." Shikamaru told her. It was the only logical answer to him, and Ino looked amazed at the entire situation. Shikamaru still hadn't let go of her wrist, but then Ino's words hit Temari like a stack of bricks as they floated from her mouth.

"I love you too, Shikam-" Ino began, and as Shikamaru's hand left her wrist Temari knew exactly why Ino had stopped speaking.

Shikamaru was kissing her.

Lips pressed furiously against hers, demanding that they made up for everything they had missed in all of the time they had not said a word to each other about their feelings. The passion he had hidden away with laziness, heated and caring at the same time.

"Just wanted to show you." Shikamaru told her, clearly referring to his earlier statement. He did love her. He loved her so much it had hurt both of them, and even eventually her. She tried to look at anything but him, searching for an inanimate object to stare at until the two realised she was there again. Instead, she met another set of dark eyes. Another set of dark eyes, darker than Shikamaru's and they looked just as hurt as she assumed her own did.

She moved away from Shikamaru, forgetting her own feelings for an instant. Moving towards the man (Sai, she was pretty sure that was his name) she looped her arm through his. His skin was almost as pale as Ino's, and it did him favours too. Although unlike Ino, who was beautiful in a noticeable way, this man was silently beautiful. Too see his beauty, you had to really look and notice how gorgeous he actually was. It seemed he felt the same way as she did. Well, about the first part at least. Probably not the second. He did not unlink his arm from hers, smiling at her softly.

"Hey, Miss Pretty. You look just as sad as my books told me I would feel." He said, and Temari stared at him for a few seconds before she laughed at his odd words. He was strange. But that was ok. So was she, and so was her whole slightly dysfunctional but loving family.

"Sai, right? You just gave me a jolt." Although he looked confused, Temari laughed. It looked like things were about to get much better. Especially with this fine male specimen around her. Even if he was odd. She liked odd. Also, he was sure a few weeks later his old picture of the fair blonde would be ruined with turpentine. It was time that girl in the picture had had painted such a long time ago was given a new look.

Sometimes after that, Shikamaru compared himself to an electrician. An electrician who could not only sort out electric problems in homes, but an electrician who could control certain feelings of jolts as they ran through Ino's heart. Although she laughed and said she'd rather have him act normal and lazy instead of corny, deep down she did agree. He had given her jolts, and he still did.

Shikamaru was a good electrician.

* * *

Corny much? Old school ShikaIno? New school almost serious implied SaiTema? Hmm.

I am positively insane.

Reviews are loved. :)

* * *


	4. The Racer

Summary: _She wanted their romance to be an epic._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Theme four of my thirty kisses challenge. Naruto is good; but right now I am completely absorbed in the second series of Galactik Football. I watched it ages ago, 2006 was it? Tia in it is wonderful, although Rocket is good too. I recommend watching it.

Now, **Theme Four: Our distance and that person.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Racer_**

* * *

He was thirty miles from her.

His heavy pants to draw air did nothing to make his heart stop pounding as he threw himself further along to where he thought she would be by now, the scorching Suna sun beating down on his back and making the shirt beneath his standard vest cling to him because of his perspiration. He desperately needed water, not accustomed to the heat and finding the conditions difficult. It was a struggle to survive without anybody with you who actually knew where they were going in a place with no landmarks such as a Suna shinobi, but that had not been something (even he, a genius) had thought about when following the running Ino.

His eyelids felt heavy, like they wanted to drag him down into an unwanted slumber. But he refused their offer, stifling the yawn escaping his parched lips and opening his eyes widely, and stubbornly. She had started to rub off on him with her bold attitude, her belief that nobody should ever give up. She was almost like a female version of Naruto. Both blonde, loud, and most of all troublesome. Annoyingly so. Yet somehow, just because he had known her so long, because she was of the opposite sex it was different. Her screeching voice had grown on him, as well as her overly dramatic antics. Her blonde silky hair, and a gorgeous face that looked so unearthly beautiful it was like a sculpture carved from peach marble.

Somehow, he cared about her. That much was evident. Through all of her tantrums, her spiteful moments and spoilt demands he had not listened to he still stood next to her. Through her tears for Sakura, as well as her tears for a certain boy. A boy who was not Shikamaru himself, or Chouji. A boy she had claimed to love. Just because Sakura had? He was not so certain. Although they claimed to be enemies, underneath the façade it seemed as though Ino hid behind her words. She did care about him, more than she wanted to in the end. But she had flourished after he disappeared after her misery had disappeared into nothingness. Her sadness had made her stronger, more resilient. Not likely to ever give in, and finally willing to work more as part of team InoShikaChou. As Ino, who practiced in any time she had spare in order to make herself stronger. In order to prove she wasn't useless. The truth was, something inside her had snapped.

He wasn't sure what it had been. Maybe the realisation that Sakura was getting stronger, that Sakura didn't need her protection anymore because she was now her equal, and that maybe the simple fact that friends were the best thing she had to believe in. Better than traitors who would join somebody who wanted to destroy the very place that had given him a purpose and meaning, a place to call home. Because that traitor would never pay attention to somebody who defended her home, who cared for it and helped it to grow even better and stronger. Somebody who wanted a brighter future than death, a place with peace and morals. Someplace good. That was the place Ino wanted. Shikamaru knew that, although he never asked her. He also knew that she thought that they were both too different, and that he had never really paid her any attention anyway. So what did he matter to her? She would become stronger than him, and prove that she was the one who was right. Right to believe in her village, right to hope for something better than just killing their supposed enemies day on end.

But even she knew that was a little too idealistic. Sometimes enemies rose who needed to be stopped, for the good of everyone – to keep the peace they worked for. Being an idealist sometimes got her into far too much trouble too, thinking that people could be reconciled and that people could change. Even when it seemed they were already too far gone, and that nobody could help them. Nobody could make a difference. She wanted desperately to believe differently. Because of that, she had taken a liking to Temari.

Just like the traitor, she had also once fought again Konoha. The place that Ino loved. But unlike him, she stood and represented everything Ino wanted to achieve like a shining beacon of hope and triumph. She had fought to protect her own country on the orders of people who were old and still foolish like young children, not knowing scraped knees were less painful than the bloodshed caused by war. Temari, like Ino, was idealistic but in a much more logical way. She knew when battles could no be avoided. She had known when to reconcile with Konoha, preventing a war that could have erupted between the two countries and keeping peace. Even helping to save Shikamaru's life in a fight against somebody who had helped the traitor to escape. That girl, now a woman had stood for everything Ino respected.

But then, everything had had changed. Ino had started to withdraw whenever he and Temari were together alone, like when she saw them in the streets. She would claim she was meeting somebody, or that she had somewhere to be. Somewhere where she was needed, somewhere where somebody wanted her. People who were not them, because Shikamaru had the feeling that she felt they did not want her there. A genius and a woman who was cunning and smart, smarter than Ino.

But even as a genius, he was also a man. Men tend to be less emotional than women; he knew that for a fact. Women knew how to tell all sorts of things about each other from mere glances as they passed in the street, able to read emotions like books. Men couldn't do that, they simply could not. Ino had never said it, but he had the feeling she knew more than she liked to let on about Temari. Who she would be civil to, who she would help and train with. But only as long as Chouji was with Shikamaru too. Otherwise, Shikamaru got the feeling she did not like being around them when they were together at all. It was almost like a bubble had appeared, encapsulating him and the only female sand sibling that sealed them off from Ino completely.

But now, he knew what the problem Ino had seen was. Ino knew before any of them did, even before Temari herself knew. Ino had known all too well, and it had bothered her. Tormented her in her dreams that rapidly became nightmares, mocking her and playing games with her mind. She never knew what that was like until then, because she relied on being able to enter the minds and bodies of others and play games with them instead. It had never been the other way around, not until Suna made their alliance with Konoha reinstated and they had begun to see more and more of Temari.

Ino knew before any of them that Temari would end up in love with Shikamaru.

Just as she was.

* * *

Twenty miles away, Shikamaru had not stopped to rest.

But a little further across the desert, Ino had. Her feat had began to sting, and when she had stopped and sat on the only rock she had seen for about five miles to rest she had peeled her shoes off to see a fair amount of damage she hadn't even realised she had inflicted upon herself. Two large blisters had been created on the backs of her heels, red raw and sore when she prodded them with a slender finger. Her toes were red, the skin at the end begging to peel. The likelihood was that they had burnt during her seemingly endless run. Her run to nowhere. She didn't even have a clue where she was going, and she had known it all along. But surely, wherever it was, it could not hurt her to make a new home for herself there where she couldn't be found as much as her feet were hurting at that moment. Her thoughts were selfish, she knew that. But right now, it did not matter. Her feet were battered and bruised, and there was no way in Hell she could continue unless there was some sort of sudden random miracle to fix them up for a bit.

"_Grow up, Ino. You need to fight __to kill sometimes, for your own sake."_

But hoping for a miracle would be foolish. She decided that as soon as Temari's words rung through her head, reminding her of memories she would rather forget. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, dreaming of her home. Make that her old home. Konoha. With lush green trees, heat that was pleasant instead of sickly and cool, clean water that came from springs. Not something the first or second Hokage had made with their long-forgotten jutsus, but completely natural. They had come long after the beauty of the forest and its many flowers and life forms, and made a home there. But the original home of people was the forest, and that was the very reason that Ino loved the plants so much. Her family made things beautiful, and looked beautiful – but they were frauds. They hid behind masks and deceived. They were nothing compared to what the forest was, because the forest was real and truly beautiful. Not shallow like them. Not shallow like herself.

"_You're naïve, to believe that looks can save you."_

Within those few seconds, Ino had already begun to doze off on the rock. They were some of the only words the boy who had abandoned Konoha had said to her. She briefly wondered what he was like at that time as a man, but quickly barred all thoughts of it. Negative thoughts were never a good thing, they sometimes made her paranoid. It would do her some good to rest, and although she was unprotected she doubted she would be harmed in a remote place that did not have any signs of life whatsoever. She knew she would probably wake up even more burned; her arms, legs and stomach making her look as red as a lobster and although she knew that she was vain she was a doer and not a thinker. She didn't care, just for that moment. She needed rest, underneath the setting desert sun. When the stars began to rise in the dark sky, her eyelids fluttered lightly. She was asleep before she was aware that she was finally drifting off.

"_Never let your guard down, Ino. It could kill you if you do, and I don't want you to die."_

Unfortunately for her, she was not entirely accurate in her observations. Shikamaru's words ad been said after the death of Asuma. She supposed he was trying to sound harsh to make it stay in her head, but he had seemed so much more utterly defeated at the time his intent of wanting to protect the remainder of their team ever clearer. Although there were no signs of civilisation, there was life. Life that was not animal. Life that was human, living and breathing just as she did. One human, to be more accurate. A male human who had watched and waited for the opportune moment. The opportune moment that had reared its ugly head.

At the same time, fifteen miles away Shikamaru also decided to rest.

* * *

When Ino awoke in the morning, Shikamaru was less than two miles away.

Her head had bumped on something hard, and simply by opening her pale blue eyes she saw that she was not in the place she should have been. Infact, she had no clue where she was at all. She had no idea of her distance from Suna any longer, and seeing some large walls on the horizon at the bottom of the orange sky through a crack in the wooden thing she was contained in was probably not a wonderful thing. Especially seeing as the walls were made from dull yellow brick, the same shade as sand and the same colour as the bricks made from it that people had a long time ago used to build the walls of Suna.

It was thirty three miles from Konoha to Suna exactly, and thirty one miles of that was desert. The other two was forest, and if you went in the other direction from Konoha there was more forest and no desert at all. Most other hidden villages were based in the sensible areas, where conditions were not so impossible to survive in.

She tried to use her hands to reach her backpack and retrieve the canteen she had been carrying that inside had the remainder of the icy cold water she had needed for the journey. But it seemed she would have no such luck. She could no longer feel the straps of the backpack, nor the bulk of it bearing down on her shoulders. She also found that her hands were tied behind her back using crude brown rope. Almost like a pig before it was beheaded to make a succulent bowl of ramen Naruto would eat, she thought spitefully to herself. Hilarious, really. Ironically hilarious that the Ino-boar would be tied up like an Ino-piglet.

But sadly for whoever tied her up, she did not need that backpack to get anything to release herself. She doubted the person or persons had even realised that she was a kunoichi. Killing was an art for her. Although she didn't like it, although she knew it was wrong it was the way she made money and her way of surviving. Even though she hoped for peace, war was sometimes needed in order to obtain it. Each wonderful thing comes with a large sacrifice, and hers was the chance that any day she was doing a mission C rank or above that she could possibly be harmed. Or even killed, if the enemy was more than just another weak underling of the enemy. She shuddered.

Sometimes, she thought of the enemy when she killed them. To remind them that she cared, she always placed a flower in their limp hand if she thought they merited it for their performance, and if they had not taken anybody she cared for down with them. She cared that they had died, because sometimes they weren't young like her. Sometimes they were older, and the possibility was they could have lovers, wives and husbands, even children waiting for them in the home they had come from. Everybody has a place they were born, a place they called home. Everybody, even if it didn't seem like it, had somebody who cared about them enough to ensure that they were born. That they stayed alive. That they lived.

Sometimes she wondered if the enemies she fought had ever had the same ideas about her. A weak underling, of no particular significance. Just another enemy to kill, another person to fight and try and survive against in the world they lived in. She wondered if in the case that one of them ever killed her when she was on a lone mission, if they would place a flower in her hand as she did for them. Or if they would simply see her as just another dead body, just another person they had their hands stained with the crimson blood with. Not worth the time or effort, as her death would mean that they were safe. Be it for five minutes, five days, five weeks, five months or even five years. They would survive, but for how long? They had to, didn't they? To support their families. To return home to the people who cared about them, who would be overjoyed to see their faces again. To find out that they were safe. A image of her father's face was one she briefly conjured up in her head, the relieved expression and familiar smile making her heart ache. If only he had lived to see her stoop this low, and be caught in such an undignified situation like this. She doubted he would be happy about it. Infact, he would probably keel over in his grave and attempt to die all over again.

With her mindset back on track, she quickly cut through the ropes with chakra that she emitted from her palms. She did the same to the ropes around her feet, and once she was released and had sat up straight with her back aching she realised she was not the only one there. Some curious eyes of other women had watched her, some also tied in the way she was. Some had more shame, not looking to her and trying to think of ways to release themselves. She guessed they had just as much pride as she did. One of the girls she could see watching her looked barely a day over twelve, and she suddenly felt bile move around in her stomach. She could guess what this was.

"Are we being traded as slaves?" She asked softly to the girl, rubbing her chaffed wrists. The red marks on her skin were not pretty, but the shade of this dark wooden square they were contained in had prevented her from being burned. The bile in her stomach began churning again when she realised they were moving. Someone was transporting them. All thoughts of pity she had for the family of the person were lost. Whoever he or she was, they were not a person who was doing good. Good like she wanted, with no pain or hurt or ugly killing.

"No. I heard we are about to come much worse." The girl whispered back, dark hair hiding her face as she placed her head on her knees. It looked like she was about to cry. Ino wanted to offer comfort, but now was not the time. A plan for action was what was needed.

"Yeah, sure. Not while I'm here, we're not." She hissed, and it was loud enough that all the women in the silent almost-darkness began to turn to look at her. She felt under her skirt slightly, around her thigh. The idiot hadn't realised she still had her kunai holster. Rather than wasting any more chakra, she drew one of the blades and cut the rope off of the feet of the girl sitting in front of her. The girl looked up, seemingly questioning but looking grateful. She removed the bonds on her wrist, then handed her the weapon.

"Start cutting everyone else free. We're getting out of here." She said, and the rest of the group looked at her as though she were insane.

"We can't do that. A few weapons won't do you any good, especially if you don't know how to use them." The catty words came from one of the darkest corners, where Ino could only just make out the shape of a woman wearing fine clothing. Somebody was sure to be looking for someone like her. She smiled at the words though, chuckling lightly.

"Oh, spare me. I'm a kunoichi; why else would I be carrying weapons? So I know how to use them. Infact, I've killed using some of the ones in this holster. Care to try me to see if it's the truth? I haven't got an objection to killing other people as well as whoever put me in here. Or I could help you. Your choice." She cackled, almost feeling bad about her words. But she didn't, because the woman thought she was incompetent. That was one thing Ino was defiantly not, and never would be. She smiled when no answer came. The woman had gathered that Ino was not somebody to be tried. Her patience was short and wearing even thinner due to the agitation of her words.

"Excellent. No arguments. I can do this then." Standing up and making her way through the staring gaggle of women, Ino readied her fist. Concentrating a fair amount of chakra into it as the girl began to release more and more of those who were also captive in what seemed to be a moving box, she rammed her fist into the makeshift wooden door. It smashed to pieces, and the sound was atrocious. The moving stopped.

Within a few seconds, a man was standing in front of her. His teeth were yellowing and crooked, his eyes dark and squinting in the sun. Small, reminding her of writhing insects apart from the fact that they were planted in his eye sockets. His skin was parchment coloured, like demera sugar that had lost the sheen and glitter of goodness. She disliked him already, and the clearly lecherous look he surveyed her with made her all too ready to kill him already.

"You smashed the door, my pretty. You'll need to pay for that with your earning from the brothel you'll be working in." He leered, and she smiled back. He looked surprised at her reaction to his words. A fool really, to think that somebody who could smash his crude door could not do the same with his head.

"Yeah, sure. I'd like to see you get me in a brothel to begin with, though." She retorted quickly, drawing a kunai from her pouch and slitting his throat with ease. Blood spurted, and there were screams and cries as some of the other women looked away. The girl she had given the kunai however looked at the weapon in her hand with something that resembled fascination and longing, and Ino felt instantly that the girl could become a kunoichi if she wanted to. She was not at all fazed by the mess she had created.

Seeing a familiar face approaching, she knew there could be even more mess soon.

* * *

Shikamaru was looking at her.

The glorious, proud and crimson-spattered Ino. His eyes shifted to the dead man at her feet, lying in the debris of the smashed wood that was scattered in the sand. His blood was soaking into it, making the golden colour duller and less pleasing to the human eye. He frowned at the mess, frowned at her and ignored the women staring at him simply because he had appeared from what seemed like nowhere and appeared to recognise their saviour.

"Ino, you really are a piece of work." He mumbled as he reached her, stepping carefully over the body although the soles of his shoes were still slightly smitten with bloody sand. She smiled back at him, though it was cold and foreign. Nothing like her smiles even brighter than the Suna weather, welcoming and cheerful.

"What? Just because I killed someone? You have too, Shikamaru." She said, sounding rather too cheerful about it. The women all looked away, attempting to respect their privacy. Arguments were not something to draw attention too, and the girl with the kunai simply sat down and began to stab it into the makeshift floor and remove it again, doing the same thing over and over in a rhythmic pattern that made an odd sound close to that of drumming.

"No, because you don't even seem to realise what you've done is wrong." He answered was agitated, his words loud enough for everyone in a ten mile radius to hear. He wasn't happy at all. She glared at him, her feigned happy attitude turning to bitterness and resentment.

"She just saved us all from becoming whores, and you're saying that she's done wrong?" The woman who had contradicted her earlier, the one who looked out of place with her silky clothing and delicate layers of clothing spoke up. Shikamaru glared at her, and the woman glared back. Ino smiled again. Maybe the woman wasn't as stuck-up as she thought.

"No. That was fine. I was actually referring to making me break the heart of a close friend only to find you had disappeared, being over-dramatic as per bloody usual, which Kankuro then told me was my fault for not 'realising' sooner. Then making me trek halfway from Suna to find you, just so I could tell you that you're a complete and utter self-absorbed idiot." He shouted. She looked hurt, and he immediately bit his lip. She covered it up quickly though with a tinkling laugh, the one she knew he loved, and a bright smile that dazzled him at the best of times.

"I didn't ask you to tell Temari you don't love her. I didn't ask you to go after me when I left, trekking halfway from Suna to find me. I certainly didn't ask Kankuro to say anything to you. So Shikamaru, why are you blaming me?" She smiled, and he looked at her with such absolute rage that she couldn't help but laugh again. Because he knew that for once, Ino was right. He could just have said to Temari that he loved her too, preventing a fiasco. He could have not gone after Ino, and waited for her to turn up like she usually did. But he had a nagging feeling that she wouldn't, and if she said she hadn't said a word to Kankuro it was probably the truth. Most men weren't so enthusiastic about talking to people who broke the heart of their sister, because they were more enthusiastic about killing them.

"What do you want from me?" Shikamaru asked, looking utterly defeated. Ino looked at him, her smile cracking completely. He may have been defeated, but she looked as though she may of well have been half-dead. She sat on the edge of the box, hanging her legs over the side. A wooden cart, that had been what she was trapped in, eh? She felt tears filling her eyes, and simply let her head drop forward and hit his chunin vest with a soft pat.

"I want you to love me like I love you. I want our romance to be an epic, something people talk about for years and years because it was so genuine. I want us to be the next Romeo and Juliet. I want us to just be us. " She sobbed, and he looked at the girl leaning forward on his vest. She was so stupid sometimes he was certain she was a dumb blonde stereotype she was often labelled with, but he supposed that this wasn't entirely her fault. There was no way that Ino was stupid, either. She was devious and cunning, a brilliant spy and interrogator.

"You should have just said that, rather than running." He whispered in her ear, almost laughing at the entire situation because it was so like her. She had made him travel enormous distances, just because she was _that person. _The one he cared for so much, he adored and she had never even realised it. She had been over-dramatic as usual, blowing things out of proportion and not really thinking what she was doing or even where she was going to go.

"But you don't love me." She sobbed, clinging to his vest. He laughed, and she sobbed harder although all the women were now staring at the situation as though it were something completely insane. A man just walking from the desert, and the kunoichi who had saved them all knew him. She knew him and was in love with him, and she wanted a romantic epic still? She had one right under her nose, and she didn't even seem to realise it.

"Yes, I do. I love you, Ino Yamanaka." He whispered.

Then he kissed her furiously, feeling her melt like butter as his lips touched hers. She let out a small squeal of surprise, but he ignored it. He ignored the stares of the women wondering what was going on with the mad girl that had saved them all, and he ignored some of the disapproving tuts from the stuck-up girl in the corner. He ignored it all.

He had become a racer, running after Ino just to tell her he loved her. Just to kiss her, just to know that she was his and he was hers. Their romance was an epic, and he knew that for certain because he had never put more effort into anything in his whole life. Especially for a troublesome woman like her. Romeo had been a racer, running to catch Juliet. Thinking about it herself, that had been Ino's words on his thoughts. Her penny for his thoughts. As long as she was Juliet to him, she didn't mind what their romance was like anymore.

But a few years later, rumours came from Suna that a romance had happened in the middle of a desert between a wanderer and a strange powerful kunoichi. The women she saved had witnessed it. Although the rumour had died down later, Ino had still liked the look on Sakura's face when she had mentioned the situation she had put Shikamaru though.

Their romance was defiantly an epic.

* * *

OOC. Too long. Random. I do not know. I half expect myself to come out with an M-rated one next. :O

I was bored. Blame watching Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies.

Reviews are loved. :)

* * *


	5. The Liar

Summary: _My name should have been on there instead._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Art exams are not fun. This one is from the point of view of Shikamaru. Light swearing, and a fair amount of angst.

Now, **Theme Five: "Ano sa" ("hey, you know…")**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

_**The Liar**_

* * *

It is Ino's sixteenth birthday.

"Hey, you know she's here." Chouji smiled at me, his smile supposed to be comforting. I stared back at him blankly for a few seconds, and then looked to my side. He was right. She was sitting right beside me as usual, her long pale golden hair blowing gently in the wind. At points it even looked like a halo, flowing around in the sky without any limits. Like a cloud, but nonexistent. He placed a plate by her, and she nodded gratefully.

"Thanks, Chouji. So I heard about you and Temari, Shikamaru. Congratulations!" She beamed, and I smiled back. We were both such liars. Liars to wear masks to each other, to tell each other everything was fine and this was what we wanted. Awful, disgusting, filthy liars who needed to learn when to speak up. She had always done it before, so why had she not done it now? Was she scared that I didn't know, that I'd tell her she was just a dreamer to think that something between us could ever happen? Or maybe I'm just kidding myself, telling myself that because it's what I want to hear her say.

"You're happy about this day? I'd hoped it would give you some peace of mind." Chouji smiled, placing a piece of her birthday cake in front of me. September twenty-third. Such a beautiful and ugly day for us all. The day before had been his birthday, and she hadn't got him a present. I had got her one though, and it is in my pocket and ready for the opportune moment. The opportune moment being when Chouji had left us.

"Yes, I suppose." I replied, and his grin faded to a frown before he forced it into a smile once more. Ino giggled, clearly amused by my mood. She always seemed to find it funny when she aggravates me, especially when she knows it will get a rise.

"Stop being a whiny git. Today is my birthday, and birthdays aren't supposed to be troublesome. Neither is this little party." She stated quickly, before I could protest about this entire situation. Chouji looked at me in silence, the smile still forced on his face. He tried too hard to be kind sometimes; he had to know when to just stay calm. Sometimes situations called for it, and him not saying a word right now was probably good for all of us. Keeping the peace between Ino and I was even harder on our birthdays, because they were so close and I was usually more exhausted than normal by the morning of hers due to the troublesome woman pressuring me to have a party. That woman who was actually not Ino herself, but my mother. She has always been stubborn about that, even though I hate parties. Too much noise, and loud people who've drunk too much. I'd prefer to spend the day cloud watching or sleeping; they're both less strenuous activities.

"Why don't you leave us for a while, Chouji? We'll catch up later; I just want to find out about Shikamaru's new relationship." She laughed, but it didn't seem as though Chouji had heard her. I repeated her question for him, asking him to leave us for a while. A slightly worried smile was on his face, but he left anyway. His cake had disappeared, and soon Ino's will have too. Three slices only, one for each of us. It was a wonder she hadn't packed more for him like she normally did. Ino was pulling hers apart, taking random bites. She never really was as big on food as the rest of us. Don't take that the wrong way, it's not like she doesn't eat. She just feels satisfied with what she has most of the time.

"So, what were you saying?" I muttered, and she gave me a warm look. It almost made my insides melt into a pile of useless gloop. Well, it felt like it had anyway – no doubt about it – because she didn't even need to force that on. Something like that could be practiced, sure, but it could never be achieved. She had that look naturally, that unearthly beauty. Sometimes it made me feel inadequate, as anyone next to her looked plain and dull unless they also looked like Gods or Goddesses. I suppose that's why she usually has that Sai guy by her side, because he's not handsome like most girls say men are. He's beautiful. They're both beautiful, and because of that they don't seem less attractive when they are with each other. After all, it's only natural that beautiful people want people who are equally as beautiful. Almost like selective breeding really. But it wasn't, because I had messed up their gorgeous shine of radiance by simply grabbing her attention away from him. I would have felt sorry for him, but I know that he wouldn't of been for me. So I didn't care about messing up that perfection really, as long as she was by my side it simply didn't matter.

"About you and Temari. You really love her, don't you?" She smiled softly, beginning to mash the stems of daises in order to make a chain. She linked them through each other quite a few times before I could bring myself to reply. Sometimes the truth had to be told, and now was one of those times.

"I will never love her as much as I love you. You know that." I told her, and she looked at me calmly. It was old news to her that I loved her, and it was old news that she loved me. Even if she never said it, it was only because she had never had the chance to. The daisy chain was finished already, and she placed it around my head like we were both five years old again. But five year old only scraped knees. They rarely knew the pain of the real world like we did.

"So you don't love her?" She asked, her smile breaking slightly. Now she was faking, just as Chouji had. They both didn't want to hear the truth. Perhaps because they knew that one day, Ino would tell me the opposite of what I desperately wanted to believe. They knew that it would break my heart. They knew that it would ruin team InoShikaChou, and that was a risk that none of us could take if something were to go wrong between us. It would be too awkward, too odd, too strange and too painful. Yet the idea intoxicated me nonetheless, and it appeared to intoxicate Ino as well.

"No, I don't love her." I whispered so only she and I could hear before the sound of somebody flopping on to the blanket with us the indication that our conversation should end. Temari sat beside me, smiling happily.

"Who were you talking to?" She asked, the smile she had practiced that was so unlike Ino's on her face. I looked to my side, prepared to ask why she was ignoring the fact that Ino was there. But the other blonde, the one I actually wanted, was already long gone. There were no traces she had ever even been there.

The cake she had pulled apart was back together again, fixed and unbroken as it was before her assault on it. I reached for the daisy chain on my head, but that too was gone. No petals even remained on the red and white chequered blanket. Not one single strand of pale blonde hair, no warmth left from body heat where she had sat. I moved me fingers to where she had sat for a moment; briefly thinking what could have been said if we were uninterrupted. When I looked back, Temari was smiling at me but her smile was serene. She was sad, but in the sort of calm way that made me feel that it was not my fault.

"Nobody, I was talking to nobody." I replied, murmuring quietly. She placed her hand on mine. It was more calloused than either Ino's or my own, the skin rougher and more tanned than the smooth pale skin Ino had. Temari looked more like a shinobi, more like you would assume one to look like anyway. Ino looked more like an actress or a model, like the woman who played the Princess in those old movies Naruto used to watch a long time ago. Except more beautiful, more angelic.

"It's her birthday today, isn't it?" She asked softly, and I felt my jaw stiffen. She clearly saw it do so, and she knew what it signified. My unwillingness to speak about the subject concerned, my unwillingness to speak about Ino. I forced it to relax to answer her simply, elaborate detail was not needed. She knew more than I wanted her to already about the entire situation. She wasn't even supposed to be involved; it would stop her from being hurt. Stop pain.

"Yes." I replied. She patted my hand softly with her long fingers. I didn't turn to look at her again, instead directing my gaze at the sky. I wondered briefly if she knew that she would never compare – never be the woman I wanted – but dismissed it quickly. It would be better to say nothing, even if the truth was required. I needed to tell it to Ino, but telling Temari would be out of the question. For now, at least.

"Hey, you know she wants you to be happy." She said, placing a soft kiss on my cheek. That was what I called an 'Ino gesture'. One of those things Ino typically did. Usually to her friends, just to show that she was particularly pleased with them. I suddenly felt my throat burn, and the words I actually wanted to say simply wouldn't emit. Perhaps because I only told myself that I wanted them to, because I actually wanted the complete opposite.

"Yes, I know she does."

She does want me to be happy Temari, you have that dead on. But not with you.

_With her._

* * *

It is Ino's seventeenth birthday.

"Well, don't we look smart today?" She beamed, and I stared at her. Did she not see that she was destroying both of us by not saying anything right now, not telling me that she wanted this to stop just as much as I did. No, infact – not just wanted – she needed it to stop, she needed to hear me tell her that I loved her just as much as she did.

"Ino, just say the word and I can stop all this." I whispered, leaning in to close those few centimetres beneath us and whisper in her ear. She smiled, almost mockingly. It was as though the thought was running through her head that I was a fool for her. The thought that I always had been, the thought that I still was although this is the day I'm supposed to be marrying another woman. The day I'm expected to marry Temari. The day I never wanted, because in my imagination the bride was always the other blonde.

"It's better for our relationship with the Sand, seeing as she is the sister of the Kazekage." Her reply was quick, she didn't want to think about her answer. It sounded almost like something I would have come up with a long time ago, but lying to myself was never a thing I had been particularly good at when it came to her. Yamanaka Ino stopped my heart and head, prevented all logic and reason because she was the one I had managed to fall in love with. The loud, troublesome blonde who thumped me every time I complained about her. Or a long time ago, every time I complained about her or Sasuke. Chouji walked in on me smiling at her. Or rather, me smiling at my reflection in the mirror. Ino was once again gone without a trace, and would probably be nowhere to be found around here.

"Hey, you know what? I bet she's happy about this." Chouji said. He was my best man for the wedding, still my best friend but somehow I had held the truth back from him this entire time. His hand hovered over my shoulder for a few seconds before clamping down on it in a friendly gesture, and my smile disappeared.

"Who is? Temari?" I asked, hoping to God that he wasn't referring to who I was thinking of. But it seemed I would have no such luck. He looked briefly to my ears, now pierced with two holes on each side. Two for my studs, where my hoops had been previously before all three of us made chunin. Then another to for Ino's, because she didn't want them anymore and had given them to me. Someone needed to wear them.

"No. You know who I mean." He said, tactfully avoiding saying her name. I still don't understand why he just doesn't say it. Maybe because he thinks it'd be like pulling a trigger, setting something into motion that shouldn't be. He was both wrong and right with that theory. In some ways, perhaps his avoidance of her name really was better. But still, he couldn't stop me from saying it.

"Ino." I said. That one word made him silent, staring at me in a sullen manner in reflection I could see behind me using the mirror and knowing I was staring back at him using it. His gaze soon redirected, and I instantly knew that he was holding something in. But he soon said it anyway, because he knows by now that I can tell his every change. Even in his mood. To me he is like a book, a new one with no torn or frayed pages. I've known him long, perhaps too long. We might end up old men, living together when we're old and dying alone and miserable. Not a nice thought really, but it was a better thought than actually going through with this and promising to love somebody who I actually just admired the skills of.

"Shikamaru, when will you see it?" He whispered, and I felt my entire body stiffen. My limbs froze midair as I lifted the blue rose I was about to tuck into my shirt pocket. It symbolised many things, each of which Ino had taught me personally not so long ago.

"_Maybe I do love him."_

She had been referring to Sai at the time, avoiding a question that Sakura had put forward about who she currently liked. She had avoided looking directly into her sea foam green eyes with her sky blue ones, not looking at anybody else either. She was staring at inanimate objects instead, and eventually anywhere but in the direction of Sakura, Sai or me. That had been the thing to set me off, her mystery.

"_I've been promoted. I'll be working in ANBU with you now. All thanks to Ibiki, of course."_

Her part time tutor, Ibiki Morino had been the one to promote her the day after that. He had promised her new adventures, more tests for her skills. To her it was just a few new opportunities and possibilities. To me, it was the same but only the new opportunities and possibilities of finding out more about her than I already knew because I was certain there was more beneath the surface.

"_I don't like this, something seems off."_

On our mission together, just us. She had thought there was a trap, and I had been certain there was none. She had been right to show caution.

"_Shikamaru, move!"_

One our mission again. She had shoved me out of the way of the trap I had been too blind to see, the one she had taken the onslaught of steel weapons from instead. The one time she had been right, and she hadn't even been able to gloat about it in the end. She had shown her feelings of the first flush of love, and flaunted the fact in my face that it might now just be too late to reciprocate.

Chouji looked to the discarded white rose on the table that should have been in my pocket instead of the blue rose. The white roses that were not from Konoha, but from the desert instead. The white desert rose of Temari, instead of the blue fiery rose of Ino.

"See what?" I asked, although I was already dreading his reply. He had been kind for too long, and now it finally seemed that he could see the cracks I could see. I have changed an awful lot since I was fifteen, since that mission happened. My best friend had known me, and something had finally managed to give. We both knew then that although he was my best friend, he knew nothing about me at all.

"It's impossible; she has become even more unattainable than she was before." Chouji said, clearly trying to remain calm. But we had both changed, we had both grown in these three years and the magic superglue that held us all together had disappeared along with something else much more important.

"You're wrong." I told him, ignoring the fact that I was still just as ruined as when I came back from that mission. When I came back, defeated and broken.

"Shikamaru, someone needs to tell you that it's too late!" Chouji shouted, and as soon as he had I managed to turn myself around and look him dead in the eye. He seemed to be just as broken as I did, and yet I had never realised. My throat crackled, and my eyes stung with moisture. I wouldn't let tears fall though. I was an adult. But I was still a boy, barely the man I needed to be to go through with this wedding.

"Why is it too late?" I whispered, although I already knew the answer. Chouji averted his eyes, moving quicker than I had ever seen him do to the door of the small room I had been waiting in for the past hour or so to leave.

"She's dead, Shikamaru. Ino's dead. You need to move on."

The fact still didn't really hit me. It just resurfaced old memories that had flickered though my mind moments beforehand, the memories of that mission that should never have gone wrong. Ino, the trap, the ambush, her being the medical staff and being unable to heal herself. Me killing them all, the crimson blood and the layers of dark dirt that had caked the skin of both of us and the pouring rain that showed no mercy as I ran back to the gate of Konoha defeated, and a broken man.

"_Ino, I love you."_

She'd been in my arms. Everything was supposed to have gone well, and it had done until she took those injuries for me. Until she stopped me from dying. Until she had her name engraved in the stone of the memorial marked killed in action, and stopping me from hearing her reply.

My name should have been on there instead.

* * *

It is Ino's eighteenth birthday.

The ring is still heavy on my finger. A burden, a supposed symbol of love. The circle is supposed to represent the never ending love I should have for my wife. Should being the operative word. I still admire her, but I don't love her. I'm sure she knows it too, because sometimes in her sleep when we stay as far away as two people in the same bed with the same cover can I hear her whisper that she hasn't seem the same brown eyes when she looks at me since that day.

It's gone far past one in the morning, and I already find myself wanting to hum happy birthday. Not for myself. Although my birthday was yesterday, I haven't really found the enjoyment in them since I became fifteen. I was a foolish old man at heart, not a genius young one. I had lost the one I cared most about just like one, and I was married just like one. I even had a child. The strange thing was, whenever I looked at those brown eyes and wispy dark blonde hair that our child, our flesh and blood had I felt that something was even more wrong than usual. The hair is supposed to be pale, almost white-blonde infact. Not the same shade as Temari's hair, the same as that of Ino.

So I've actually gotten up at this time. Not for myself, but for Ino. I made my way to the kitchen, and stared at the ingredients in the cupboard. I found what I needed, although I rarely cooked. The effort didn't seem particularly worth it, making something for two hours that could be eaten in five minutes. But for her, it was. I decided to make her a birthday cake.

When I had finished, I didn't even bother to clean up the mess. I was going on a mission in four hours anyway; it would be cleaned when I got back. The cake itself didn't take long to cook, and it was in my bag when I left the house. By the time I had reached the middle of the woods, it was already midday. I took it from my bag, and stared at it. I only looked up for a moment, and that was all I needed.

He or she had been silent. The flash of long blonde hair had been enough though for me to see him or her. It wasn't a practical thing to have hair so long for the enemy if they did not tie it back, because it trailed behind them. It could be caught in branches, clung to and used to inflict pain. Ino had always made sure that hers was tied back for that very reason. I could tell that he or she was either ignorant or very careful from that one thing. Whoever it was no longer disguised their chakra either; I could feel him or her approaching from behind.

I quickly sprung to my feet as three kunai landed where I had just been sitting. It would of been be so easy to finish the would be assailant off for me, for it was obvious that the person had practically no skill apart from their silence and speed but there was one problem.

It was a female. A female with rounded features, not sharp like hers had been. But she still had the same pale skin, the same bright blue eyes and long pale blonde hair that whipped around softly but violently with each of her movements. For a moment, my imagination was playing up again and Ino was there, Ino was alive again and she was right in front of my eyes.

"Ino?" I asked, my voice strained. The woman stared at me for a moment, clearly wondering whether or not I was trying to play her for a fool. Trying to confuse her. Of course I was, seeing as she had that rain headband tied around her waist like Ino had worn her Konoha headband an awful long time ago. But somehow, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not even when she snapped out of her temporary daze, and hurled a few kunai at me. I couldn't bring myself to move.

I was pretty sure then that I had been hit, because something was stinging. But oddly, I didn't feel worried when I looked down and knew that I was about to be killed so easily by a mere amateur. The crimson flow of blood soaking my shirt had been prolonged from staining the mesh and seeping through my chunin jacket for too long, and as insane as it sounded it gave me some sort of peace. So I lay back, and closed my eyes. The woman was clearly stunned at what I was doing. I suppose she recognised me, the top strategist of such a powerful hidden village. She had just killed me without any hassle, either. Maybe she would get a promotion, just as Ino had.

"Hey, you know I'm here Shikamaru. You can come with me, but just for a bit." The whisper came. Ino really was there, outstretching her hand for me to grasp. Perhaps I was dead. It didn't really matter, as selfish as it sounded, that I was leaving a family behind. I reached out, feeling her hand in mine for the first time in years and for then that was all that mattered.

I found myself somewhat disappointed when I woke up, seeing Temari and our crying son in her arms. She looked tired, but I supposed that I looked far worse.

"She wanted you to carry on Shikamaru. That girl chickened out of killing you, left you outside the Konoha gate and ran for it. You appear to have scared her a little." Temari said. For once in my life since the day Ino died, I felt at rest. I didn't have to lie anymore, tell them that everything was ok and that I didn't miss her. Because they had all seen it long ago, that the life I was living was a mere façade. They had known all along. That girl had wanted me to carry on, the girl who looked like Ino. Chouji stood beside her, and his voice was the second that I heard.

"Hey, you know Ino would want you to stay alive. To live her life for her."

Chouji had never been a liar like me. He knew the difference between reality and illusion.

"Does that mean I need to marry Sai or something?" I joked weakly.

Hey, you know it's been three years today?

Maybe it's time that I stop lying to myself.

* * *

This sort of went nowhere. It had ShikaTema. I think I've lost all will to write.

Reviews are loved. ):


	6. The Kite

Summary: _Some things are worth wishing for._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: The business enterprise is not far away, and the team I am part of is in the semi-finals! So much pressure, but at least we get a free hotel trip.

Now, **Theme Six: ****the space between dream and reality.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

_**The Kite**_

* * *

Yamanaka Ino was like a kite.

She could show you everything you wanted, or she could take it all away by throwing herself around as she pleased. She could drift into your grasp one moment, and then stray from it the next without thought. Her hands were like the string, able to shred your skin into ribbons and bloody mess. Just like the bold, block primary colours of a kite she was attractive. Just like the kite that was blown from place to place by the wind when released from a weak hold, she was a drifter. She never stayed with the same person for long.

She never stayed the same as she had been for a while, even. She'd change her style at the snap of some fingers, her attitude in an instant to hide her loudmouth and her beauty because she'd always assume that she had got everything wrong. She was self-conscious and lived in the chapel of some fashionable town called vanity, never quite pleased with the way she was.

But he had still hoped. Shikamaru Nara had hoped and wished and dreamed for all it was worth, praying and begging and pleading a God he wasn't even sure he believed in for her to stay by his side. He would do anything for it. He'd do sixteen missions without pay for people who needed it (even if they were some stupidly high rank), he'd run fifty miles without stopping or he'd throw himself off a bridge just to make that thing he called God laugh. All as long as he gave him Ino, as long as he let him keep her. That was all he wanted.

"It's your birthday, Shikamaru! Make a wish when you blow out the candles, eh?"

She had laughed it so easily, smiling happily and leaning on his table with her face propped up by the palms of her hands. She was so flawless in that moment he felt his heart skip a beat, and although she showed no signs of discomfort he felt odd about her being around him on his birthday for once in his life. Perhaps it was because he was sixteen and no longer five, but he was pretty sure what it really was. She was Ino, she was unobtainable, she was on his team, she was beautiful, she was perfect, she was too good for anyone like him and she wasn't his. The likelihood was that she never would be. But he wished anyway.

"I wish for you, Ino. You're the only thing I want."

She'd looked stunned, her hands dropping from beneath her chin and making her face smack into the table. She didn't even seem to realise it had happened, and he sure as Hell wished straight away that he hadn't said it. His heart had spoke before his head, and made him look like a complete and utter fool when he was supposed to be the genius of their group. She was clearly embarrassed when she sat back up, ignoring the pink streak on her cheeks and on his when she whispered back to him.

"But will I wish for you tomorrow?"

With those words, he had almost felt his heart break. He told himself it was for the best; she would only toy with him anyway, that God hadn't given him her for a reason. Either that or she had known just as well as he did confusion was better for them both, that way she would hurt him less and not need to end up caring for him as more than just one of her guy friends at all. Being her friend was better than having nothing to do with her at all. Although the unobtainable is right under your grasp and it might hurt if you do finally catch her, maybe it would be worth it. Just maybe then it was better. Yes, better for the both of them. He could repeat it over and over, hope that wasn't the real meaning behind her words but he knew it was.

They hadn't shared a miniature party between them since. They had done it since the age of five as tradition, eaten cake and played around. Laughed, then blown out candles and made wishes. But she had outgrown it, and so had he. They had outgrown playing, outgrown flicking crumbs and icing pieces at one another and outgrown making wishes that would never come true, no matter how much they wanted them to. Ino had outgrown wishing on that day, but Shikamaru hadn't. No matter how much he said otherwise.

Because some things are worth wishing for.

* * *

She was bold. She was a drifter. But she wasn't Ino.

It was Temari who kissed him on his seventeenth birthday, and he had never wished for her. He never wanted to, he never wanted her. He never wished for her like he did for Ino, but it seemed she had wished for him. It didn't seem to bother the other blonde at all either, for all that it mattered. She was too busy talking to Sai.

Sai, who was just like her but not. Sai, who wasn't like a kite but instead a bird, flying around and chopping the strings with his sharp claws. Although he never intended to do it, he had broken more than his fair share of hearts. He didn't even understand emotions, right? That's what he told himself. That Sai didn't understand, and perhaps neither did Ino anymore. She knew all too well what she was capable of, and she didn't even seem to care that it could hurt other people. That eventually, she could end up hurting herself. Not just others, like Temari. Temari who he said no to, Temari who wasn't the same blonde he wished for. Temari, who wasn't the blonde he was making his way towards.

Quickly stepping in between them with the skill of any invisible man, he had withdrawn his shroud of shadows. He grabbed her hand, pulled her away from the confused-looking Sai and walked past the staring Temari and everyone else in their room. They had all ceased their conversations, turning to look as he pulled her out of the back door with him into his garden. It linked to the forest where the deer lived and roamed, and even though he could no longer feel their eyes burning holes in his back he knew when he returned they would be guessing at a million stories they'd hope to see written on their faces in plain sight.

"Happy birthday for the day before yesterday."

He had said it so easily, and she had smiled at him softly. Maybe out of pity, maybe out of concern or even amusement. He never really knew with her, because he knew she could flip her mood like a switch. She could have been a wonderful actress if he hadn't become a ninja like her father. It was almost funny, that.

"You want me to make a wish without any candles to blow out?"

She had laughed, and he mentally cursed himself. It was the first year they hadn't followed their tradition, and with the events of the previous year neither had questioned as to why. Fumbling around inside his pocket, he drew out the decorated white box and lifted it up so that it was in her line of view.

"Will a cigarette as a candle do?"

She stared at the box a moment, knowing then that it wasn't just her who had changed over the past however many years. Within just three, he had taken Asuma's dreadful habit on. She would have complained that it was disgusting, but she had never quite managed to bring herself to. It made him smell just like their old sensei, and that smell was one that had grown far too familiar. It had replaced the smell of Shikamaru, it had replaced him. He was slowly becoming Asuma, and eventually Temari would be his Kurenai. But would he ever leave Temari behind? The thought stung at her, but she ignored it. She needed to not care about him, she needed to stay as she was because if you were committed to another person when you were a shinobi you would only end up hurt or end up hurting the other person. By your death or theirs. It was an unspoken fact, but it was true. She learnt it from the best.

"Light up, then. It's not like I have a choice, right?"

She feebly attempted to make the situation humorous, but as soon as the cigarette began to burn she felt another wave of nostalgia hit her even harder. She had missed this smell. She hadn't been around Shikamaru in too long, and each time she visited Asuma she would see Kurenai sitting at the stone, their baby wandering around the area where Team Seven once trained. Where Sasuke had trained, enlightened by Kakashi they shared a field with the stone reserved only for those who truly knew what it meant to be a shinobi. Killed in action. Deceased because they protected something precious to them.

"Be careful."

He handed her the lit cigarette carefully, the tip receding into ashes that blew around in the cold night air. The smell hit her, ever more powerful and she knew then straight away what she wanted. Looking at Shikamaru and knowing Chouji was inside she smiled as she pretended to blow the cigarette out like a candle.

"God, I'd give anything for my wish to come true. Just protect Shikamaru and Chouji, that's all I ask of you. I know I can't do it and that I'm no Sakura, but I want it more than anything."

He stared at her for a moment, any words he could manage to say taken from his mouth. Was that all she wanted? For others to be protected and wishing that she was as powerful as the she-beast one of her oldest friends was? He felt his throat choke up, and pulled her into a warm, extremely awkward hug before she could protest against it. He held her to his chest, smelling the scent of her naturally flowery hair from the shop and smiling just as she had.

"But then Ino, who will protect you?"

It was then, although it was too late, he didn't just wish for her any longer. He had a reason to wish for her, although their wishes were long ignored and that they never really came true. If she couldn't be his, he wanted at least one thing.

Shikamaru wished that he would always be able to protect her.

* * *

The next wish came on neither of their birthdays.

But it still wasn't a wish they had ever longed to have. It was the property of someone else, it had been his. They were still both seventeen, and neither of them really cared to think about his age. He'd been in the same year as them. The same friendship circle. The same team. It was the first of May.

It was the birthday of Chouji Akimichi, but dead men can't make wishes.

Ino looked close to tears, and there was nobody there to support her but Shikamaru. He wasn't sure he'd be very good at that either, because she wasn't the only one who was about to have a mental and physical breakdown. He would have been eighteen that day. If only he hadn't died a week ago, when Ino had begun planning his surprise party. If only Sasuke had stayed in their past, and never reared his beautifully ugly head from the depths of despair he had pulled himself into by leaving their village. If only he hadn't tried to destroy Konoha, and failed in doing so. It wasn't only himself he had killed by failing. Ino felt no sympathy knowing he had been buried in an unmarked grave, despite Naruto's protests.

She couldn't understand how she had ever loved him. Well, loved? Was it ever really love at all, or just more of a want to prove that she was better than Sakura? Maybe not, because she had liked him before Sakura had even said she did. Before she had ceased their friendship, leaving Ino, the only one who had cared to show her kindness and stand up to those who Sakura herself couldn't when she was being bullied, alone. It was almost ironic that sometimes it was now Sakura who had to protect her with her inhuman strength, that she was the one watching the back of her best friend. Or was she her best friend? They said they were best friends, they done many things together. But they never really were the same. Ino was too compassionate, and whatever teachings Tsunade had given her she had ran off and decided to improve on her own. She didn't need others to teach her things, not Tsunade and certainly not Sasuke. He had taught her how not too love.

That was what made her job easy. By leaving, Sasuke had killed something in her. Hope, maybe the compassion she saw in herself when she looked in the mirror. The compassion she never really needed, but had anyway. It wasn't useful for a shinobi. But whatever it was, Sasuke had taken it. Now he had taken her team mate as well, and everything seemed far too unfair. He always took from her, but he never gave her a thing in return. Whatever he could give her now was probably useless, anyway. She had no desire for the fake things he could give her, not even his nonexistent and no longer beating heart.

"What shall we wish for? He never told us what he wanted."

Ino whispered it, but Shikamaru heard what she said. He could also almost feel what she was thinking, the unspoken words hanging in the air like lingering smoke. It was the thing that drew them together – the comforting smell of him smoking just as Asuma had – but it was also what pushed them apart. She was thinking of the point of wishing. Even though they were together and two wishes were better than one, their wishes had never been listened to before. Why would then be any different?

"_I wish for you, Ino. You're the only thing I want."_

He was a fool. He could say that right then and there, even if it wasn't what Chouji had wanted to wish for. But he didn't, although every fibre of his being was crying out for him to do so. It would be disrespectful, it would be wrong. She'd hate him for it, even if all she needed at that moment was someone to lean on. So he cleared his throat, which was rapidly losing moisture before forcing the words out.

"Chouji would have wished for a lot of things. Anything from us being safe to some food."

Ino laughed, but it wasn't her usual happy one. It was cold, vibrating in her throat. It was hollow, just like a dead tree. Her laugh was dead.

"_Just protect Shikamaru and Chouji, that's all I ask of you."_

"_But then Ino, who will protect you?"_

They had done just the same, it would be too ironic. She quickly stopped herself however, jamming a hand over her mouth crudely and hoping that she never heard that sound emit from the depths of her chest again. It sounded far too empty, and far too uncaring. Quickly replacing it with a soft, fake smile as she removed her hand she decided to speak once more. No more harm could come after that dreadful noise she had just let out. Nothing could be worse, nothing she could stand to think of anyway.

"Peace."

He looked at her quickly, ghostly pale blonde hair whipping around in the harsh winds, her blue eyes blank as they stared at the grey stone monument. She moved her hand in an instant, the creamy white skin of her fingers tracing the name that she herself had carved on there. She'd refused to let anyone else do it, not even his father or Shikamaru. They'd let her, because she looked madder than she ever had and even Naruto had to agree on that, as dense as he was. Anyone could see she was distraught, even though she had not shed a single tear. Shikamaru himself was sure that she was bottling it up, and one day she was just going to blow. Perhaps when he died, if he went before her. But that was something he did not want to think about. In their job, there was always that possibility. Many of them just refused to accept it, and when they did they became inhuman. Strange how people would forsake humanity to gain power to survive, to remain human, to remain in flesh and blood form, to simply remain alive. He was one of the people who had learnt that the hard way. He'd lost his sensei, and now he'd lost Chouji. The only people left to lose were his family and her.

Ino. Ino, who was just like a kite. Drifting from person to person, nobody really knowing just who she was anymore because she had changed herself so much. He wasn't even sure if she knew who she was anymore. He doubted it, but maybe he was wrong. He hoped he was wrong, he'd even wish he was wrong if he didn't have such bad luck with wishing. Because even if he still felt some things were worth wishing for, he knew by then that wishes didn't always come true. They didn't live in a fairytale. In fairytales, there's always a happy ending.

"Peace?"

"Yeah, I think that's what Chouji would want."

"I think so too. We should, Ino. Let's wish for peace."

No matter how much they wished, he felt they wouldn't get either of the two things. Peace was something that had become hard to come by. With the fall of the Akatsuki, the fall of Sasuke Uchiha and wars that were still raging between ragtag bands of his followers that no longer had anything left and the outskirt towns of Konoha something else had came. All because of the Uchiha himself, for that matter.

Sure, Naruto had been the one to catch him. Sakura had been the one to beat him within inches of his life before collapsing. But Ino had been the one to enter his mind, and run around in it before breaking it beyond repair. She had been the one to leave his mind, victorious in the battle between an already almost defeated Sasuke and herself. But instead of feeling like a winner when she slit his throat, knowing that he probably didn't even remember who she was, she felt like a loser. Completely and utterly defeated. Even as his beautiful lips muttered her name, knowing who had killed him and that she wasn't just like she always been. He knew that she had changed if she was able to mess with his mind. But infact, that had been the thing to change her the most.

Shikamaru was pretty sure that it was because for all those years, she'd still hoped he would come back. Tell them all that it was a mistake, and that everything would be fine after that. She'd tried to kid herself, and it was plain for him to see as soon as she saw Chouji face down. She'd tried to think everything would be back to normal, even maybe better than normal. Maybe Sasuke would fall in love with her, and they'd have dark haired blue eyed babies or blonde haired dark eyed ones. That they'd end up married, and they'd always be happy. That they'd end up living a fairytale life. But just as he'd thought only moments beforehand, she'd realised it. She'd realised a Hell of a long time before he had, too. In fairytales, there's always a happy ending. Neither of them were likely to get peace, or a happy ending. Because they didn't live in fairytales, they lived in the real world.

"We wish for peace."

So they had to wish for the closest they could get.

* * *

It wasn't a significant day, but they still wished.

They wished for hope because they were both weakened and running dangerously low on chakra, because the mission had been a disaster and because they no longer had anything else to believe in. Not even each other, as just a month had made them distant. The sound of their talking was rare, and the idea that Shikamaru could still be in love with Ino was unspoken of. That way things were better, safer, and less hazardous. They were more likely to stay alive, even on this suicide mission.

"I'm going to have to resort to using my blade if this drags out any longer."

Ino did not look pleased in the slightest. She had quickly taken out three of their currently attacking enemies with her genjutsu bombing technique, and he had removed the same amount with his shadow possession and some kunai. They had used so much energy to prevent being sucked into genjutsu themselves dispelling the work of those they were fighting and almost wasted other energy trying to use their original techniques (which didn't work all that well against higher ranking enemies, as they soon found out) that they were finding it hard to keep up. Mist shinobi were always tough, but this was proving to be difficult to keep up any longer and he could tell Ino was losing her patience.

Her fingers hovered by her shoulder, waiting for him to tell her to let the beast she kept hidden within her loose. He would have compared it to the kyuubi, but even the nine tailed demon beast would fear her if he saw the monstrous thing she kept hidden deep inside. She rarely found it easy to control herself when she thought things were going to slowly, and that was probably the very reason Tsunade decided to allow her to ascend to ANBU rank with him. She could deal with situations quickly, although sometimes very messily. The katana her father had given her just after she carved Chouji's name into the killed in action stone hung on a belt around her shoulder, dipping under her arm and around her body to make sure that it was available when she needed it. You would have thought that she was silly, taking a weapon she had for barely three weeks into battle, but she wasn't. Ino was deadly with the thing. He had seen it first hand the previous week.

"Go ahead, just don't get carried away. It might make an already bad situation even worse. We don't know where our enemies have disappeared to in the middle of a battle, and that rarely ever happens. Just watch your back, because I don't want another screw up."

"Screw up? When have I ever done that? Plus, you know it's hard for me not to."

"You sound like a bloodthirsty nutcase. That sword gives you bad ideas."

"Please, you say that like it's a bad thing."

"That's because it is, Ino."

She froze. She looked to her side at him, and he automatically felt amazingly idiotic. He'd used her name, her God damned, God forsaken name! He would have tried to kill himself at that moment if he hadn't known it would only put her in more danger. She slapped his arm, hard. He ignored the stinging pain as she drew her sword, and lowered her black hood.

"How'd you know?"

"Only you would accept a mission this suicidal, then use genjutsu and bombs. Then try to use the jutsu you used when you were a genin on top of that. That could get you caught out from the bingo books, and you know it. There's a price on both our heads."

"Especially yours, if you're thinking the shadow possession didn't give it away."

"No need to be smarmy."

"I'm not; I just see no reason to worry anymore. I can't feel their chakra."

"Neither can I, but we need to be careful."

"Not really, we always pick up on them. If they're close and still alive, that is."

"This is what I meant. Mistakes cause screw ups."

Ino didn't reply. The words 'screw ups' seemed to finally hit home. Even if it hadn't been on an actual mission, they had messed up a fair amount of things. They had let Sasuke leave, meaning that in the future they had let their team mate (and Shikamaru's best friend) die. They'd ignored each other, growing all the more distant and colder to each other than they had ever been. Even when she was some superficial little graduate, and he was the lazy boy genius of the same level who made smarmy comments at each other just because they knew how to wind each other up. They hadn't grown much from then, if this arguing was all they had to show from their friendships along with the gorgeously disgusting screw ups.

"Move!"

Ino hit the ground, the sword that was meant to hit her piercing through Shikamaru's chest. She drew her own sword, slicing the head straight off the shoulders of the man who had stabbed him. The second man appeared quickly behind her, and one backwards swing of the sword and a tilt of her hand made his head roll to the side of the other.

"Shikamaru, you shouldn't have done that. Even if it's just a flesh wound, if that went any deeper I might not have been able to heal it right now."

"I wished to protect you."

"I wished to protect you and Chouji."

"Well, I knew it would only cut me. It would have gone straight through you."

Ino paused a moment, before managing to say what she wanted to without punching him for the last remark as she began to heal him with the small remainder of her warm, blue chakra she washed over the cut with. She pulled off her porcelain mask, and then put it by her side. She did the same with his, because she needed him to know. Face to face, rather than mask to mask. Even if the other way made them safer, this was slowly destroying her. Being safe meant not hurting herself, so this needed to be done. She whispered the words.

"You wished for me."

"You rejected me."

"Some things seem unobtainable when we don't think about answers, Shikamaru. I never rejected you at all; I'm just a wind-up merchant. You took it too seriously, so I didn't say a thing about it. I thought it would be better this way."

"Ino, you're a kite. I find that unlikely."

"A kite?"

"A kite because you drift from person to person. You've never really had a love interest for all that long, and that's why I want you. You are another puzzle to solve, another riddle to decipher and you're perfect. Wonderfully, sadistically flawless. I love you, but you could never love me, not long enough to stay with me. Even if you want to, and even if you really mean that. You know it. Sai is an option to you. He's just as stunning as you right?"

"What are you on about? I don't drift from guy to guy, I've only ever liked three."

"Sasuke, Sai, and who?"

"You said I couldn't stay with you? I could try."

Before he could say another word, her lips were pressed against his. Maybe some wishes did come true, because they were living proof from that moment. He had wanted her, he had wished for her and then he had obtained the unobtainable.

He'd finally managed to grasp the kite string.

* * *

Largely inspired by The Kooks song 'Naïve' and the book 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini. I own neither of them, but they are both wonderful and include kites which inspired this entire thing. The story actually is not based on either of them, however. So I recommend them to anybody who is particularly interested in indie style music or reading.

Also, the theme of this one was sort of interwoven. You have to read in between the lines where the words 'unobtainable' and such lie to see it. Ino is Shikamaru's dream, and to have her in reality seems impossible, which is the reason for his wishing. Yes, I do think about things too much.

A huge thanks goes to the _SasuSaku, NejiTen, InoShika, NaruHina_ c2 with this chapter as well. Thank you for adding this! It made my day, because I haven't seen much Shikamaru and Ino added to there in a while, and I'm a subscriber. So once again, thank you!

Reviews are loved. :)


	7. The Sinner

Summary: _It's their sins that tie them together, and their sins that keep them apart._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: We did not win the business enterprise. Although our school was announced with a name that made us sound really up our own backsides, as a 'Roman Catholic Comprehensive' and a 'Specialist in Maths, Computing and Languages' it appears there are schools that have Headmasters even more self absorbed than our own. Private grammar school boys? Pah. So much for that.

Now, **Theme Seven: Superstar.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

_**The Sinner**_

* * *

_Luxuria__. _**Extravagance. **_**Lust. **_

When Ino was young, she was told that she was born to be an actress.

When Princess Yukie came to Konoha a few years after her claim of the throne, she was still a widely known actress. Very few people did not know who she was based on her looks, but everyone knew her name. She had greeted Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi politely, for her sometimes bratty temperament had faded with age. However, upon seeing a blonde girl walking down the street she turned away from them completely. She told the blonde girl exactly the same thing, not knowing that she was a kunoichi as she didn't wear her headband. When she asked why it was, the blonde had laughed and not even given her an answer. She was just like Yukie herself had been, arrogant and proud. She didn't want to show her reliance on anybody or anything, not even her country.

But the Princess knew she would change with time, and she had seen the stunt this girl had just pulled. So she persisted anyway, the often pigheaded Princess came close to begging on her knees for her to at least try acting in one film, with her. What she had done to that boy with the large dog was amazing, twisting him around her finger with a little fake laughter that was easily disguised. Only someone like her, who had spent years in the business, would have even realised she had put it on. That she was playing him for a fool, just so he would pay for her meal once her friends had gone.

"You could be a star, a superstar Ino." The Princess whispered in her ear as they clambered on to the train. People stared at them and their entourage who were going back, because Ino had finally given in. They would return to Konoha, the Princess knew that, but if she could get this girl in even one film she would be happy. Because this girl could be big, she could be bigger than the Princess herself. She could be famous, she could be a star. So with her two team mates (who definitely were not star quality) and Team Seven (the dark haired boy could be, with those abs) trailing behind them, Yukie had taken the fair blonde girl to the Land of Spring without a second thought, knowing that this girl was perfect for a leading role. The director had agreed upon just seeing her. If Yukie said she was a good actress, and she was this gorgeous he could make such huge profits he wouldn't even need the royalties from the Princess Fuun movies that Yukie herself had been the lead in.

She hadn't disappointed. They had taken a chance and stuck her in the first seen in the aging Yukie's place, with the consent of the older woman of course. She was to play the beautiful daughter of a daiyamo, who took up the sword in order to escape marrying an old lecherous man that her father had chosen for her husband. Along the way she was to meet a handsome young man, who would win her heart and be an excellent swordsman who would eventually end up murdering the man she was supposed to marry in a jealous rage. She would eventually marry the handsome young man, and Yukie would show the woman in the future at the end of the film. It was over dramatic, romantic and overall a very feminine film. Women would probably love it, but Shikamaru didn't see the appeal in it at all. Especially when the director later mentioned there could be a possible nude scene. Shikamaru had demanded that it did not happen, and after a death threat the man agreed.

Just as well. The man who was to play the handsome young swordsman was nothing like the perfect male Ino said his character was. He was lecherous, disgusting and over indulging. When Shikamaru found out that he was kissing her at the end of the movie, he had a fit. Ino didn't seem to see his bad qualities however, and didn't protest. Secretly, Shikamaru though it was just because his face was so pretty. Almost like that of a girl. Chouji had managed to calm him eventually, although he saw the idiot sneak in a grope of Ino's rear end during that scene.

After they left, the man was found dead. His hands had been cut off, with a note trailed in blood on the floor saying that he should keep his hands to himself. Ino had been horrified, but Kakashi had insisted it was the place of none of them to get involved in it. She had probably just acquired a fan on the set, and they had been a bit extreme in their methods. He had met Shikamaru's eyes when saying this, and luckily nobody had noticed what he had. When dark brown met orbs that were almost black, the second pair knowing that it was Shikamaru who had some kunai missing and Shikamaru who had some unidentified blood on the soles of his shoes in little flecks, But he had still said nothing.

It was only then that Shikamaru knew that Kakashi knew. He knew about his sinful thoughts of his team mate, his wants and desires. His secret hopes, his fears, everything. He had give it all away with that one slip up, that one time when he finally lost his temper in a violent fit. She was an actress, and she was too good an actress for any film. Because although she was acting, it still drove him absolutely insane. She didn't even seem to be trying, either.

Shikamaru was _lusting_ for Ino, and that was his first sin.

* * *

_Gula_. **Over indulgence. **_**Gluttony.**_

"You shouldn't be so gluttonous, Ino."

She looked around from the mirror, quickly cramming the remaining strawberry cream filled miniature koala bear biscuit straight into her mouth. She only had two; it wasn't like it was a sin to eat of something. She raised her eyebrows at Shikamaru. He was the one who was always telling her to eat more, that having a star moment in that film months ago had gone to her head if she was going to become anorexic because of it. She protested that it would only be a few pounds that she wanted to lose, but to no avail. But not he was telling her that she was being greedy by stuffing two biscuits in her mouth? It seemed like he wanted to pick an argument with her or something, which was never a smart thing to do. There was nothing as terrible as an irate Yamanaka. It was something you learnt from experience, and the memories of fathers. Inochi had a temper just as volatile as hers (or so Shikamaru was told be his father) back in the day.

"Gluttonous?" She murmured, a dangerous air radiating from her.

"Gluttonous with your looks. Other people might want to share them. Other people aren't always as beautiful as you, so you shouldn't keep it to yourself. You should share it."

There was a pregnant pause, a dark stab of silence filling the air. Ino stared at his reflection in her mirror, his completely sincere, knowing expression and her own vacant one. How wrong he was. How very, very wrong. He had a look of time, grown with ages and mature. Dark, stoic, and amazingly attractive. It suited him. She herself was not as graceful with her looks as people seemed to think she was, taking them for granted and planning her every move. Those were the theories she'd heard other kunoichi mutter, but they were wrong. She saw no grace in herself but the gangly, strangely soft kind and her beauty was too fake. Every morning she covered herself in makeup, and for what? She still was not as beautiful as Shikamaru. Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock of the bedroom door, which did not wait for an answer. Chouji entered into the silence, the smile on his face soon becoming nervous upon seeing that Ino had not yet clobbered his best friend. She looked to Chouji briefly.

He was not the standard of beauty you saw in magazines like Kunoichi Weekly, airbrushed and anorexic to perfection. No, Chouji was a real ninja. A real comrade. A real friend. Someone who knew battle, and knew when the time was right. If anything, he was far too kind as well. He always forgave her spiteful, bratty remarks when they were younger. But now, both he and Shikamaru had forgotten her previous transgressions and refusing flat out to see her weakness and her ugliness. She was being taught by Ibiki and Anko, but somehow she couldn't catch up with them. She was always a few steps behind at least, and at most even years. She suddenly felt like Naruto. She felt like someone else, her confident shell seeming to sink into her skin as her gaze lingered on her reflection for a few mere seconds. Just as Naruto felt, she didn't feel gluttonous. She felt inadequate.

Shikamaru and Chouji were_ gluttonous_, and that was a sin.

* * *

_Avarita._ **Avarice / covetousness. **_**Greed.**_

She knew that she was greedy, that it was wrong, and that it was a disgusting betrayal.

It'd always been the beautifully dark type she proclaimed her love for, because they almost seemed like they could understand her bright acts. The way she was with her own mind, and entering the minds of others being both a dangerous and a dark thing they might have been able to somehow at least try and gather what she was, who she was, and deep down what simply made the disturbingly deadly Yamanaka Ino. But it seemed they knew nothing of her anyway. Every time she had longed for a male, everything seemed to go pear shaped from that moment. Her sensei had been the one to tell her not to lose to Sakura in ninjutsu or in love though, so maybe that was her excuse. That she was still clinging on to some nonexistent and desperate hope that she could.

The desperate hopes that Temari of the Sand had tried to prop back up, hold up like a life raft and shove back to their feet. The dreams that she had when she was younger and far more foolish, awakened once again by her new friend. The friend who had nothing to go against her for, nothing to stand by her for and did anyway. A fellow blonde, if a shade darker, who she had barely spoken to in the past who had decided to help her although there was nothing which she could possibly gain from it.

But when Temari said she might just be in love with Shikamaru, something snapped in their momentarily brilliant starting of their partnership. Ino was not sure what it was, but it just felt like something had gone wrong. Like something had changed underneath, instead of on the outside. She didn't wear her heart on her sleeve like she pretended to, and from the moment Temari said those words she knew that something was all too wrong for her liking. But she ignored it. Stubbornly, at that.

Because Ino liked Sai. Ino had to like Sai. It just had to be. He had called her gorgeous, shown some care for her like a certain traitor never had with that simple word. He had given her a little hope, a little thought that someone might actually end up liking her as more than 'just a friend' for more than a week like it usually was. Briefly she felt like she knew what it felt like. Loving someone, that was. It wasn't the same as it had been with Sasuke.

Then the moment she woke up from her possession, in Shikamaru's arms (because it was tradition) she felt like something was wrong all over again. He was looking down at her, a blank look on his face. Perfectly calm and collected as always, with no sign of change. Then everything went wrong.

Shikamaru kissed her.

As much as she felt discomfort at the idea of what was going on, she was the one to deepen the kiss. She was the one to reach up and untie his hair, tangling her fingers in the chocolate mess before she pushed him away quickly, got up and promptly got away from him in a single flick of the fingers to transport, leaving only fading white smoke lingering in the air behind. She acted like nothing had happened after that, because it was better that way, because it was safe, because it was better not to blame Shikamaru, because it meant that she hadn't betrayed a friend that had shown such kindness to her, regardless of her past with Sakura. Because it meant that it wasn't Shikamaru who had sinned, that it was her, and she'd rather be dammed then let him be. Just as Yuki had said, she was a brilliant actress. It was too easy, really. Yes, she could pretend for all it was worth and nobody would have guessed.

That she hadn't been _greedy_, taking a man that wasn't hers.

* * *

_Acedia._ **Sadness / despair. **_**Sloth.**_

Apathy, melancholy, joylessness – they were all words that led to that memory.

But although it was a memory of despair, it was bittersweet. There were some things that could be picked out about it, of the dulcet words Shikamaru had whispered to her and saccharine fumbling Chouji as he offered her his last chip. Words taught by her mother at a young age had told her that she who was winsome would be the one to win the love of a man who plagued the hearts of two women, but both before and after she died they meant nothing to Ino. All they meant was that she who was prettier would win the heart of the man, which was not always true. Not at all.

She knew it for herself. Although she was prettier, she was the one whose looks were most kempt, she was the one who preened and cared for herself and she didn't have a wide forehead like Sakura, she hadn't been the one to win Sasuke. He was a prize to be obtained in both pairs of eyes when on show, but deep down she knew they both cared for the boy more than that. His marble white skin, perfectly carved features of a sculpted masterpiece and dark raven hair like that of the men in old paintings of angels in chapels. He was like a false idol to both of them, a superstar in his own right and almost unattainable. Unless your name happened to be Sakura Haruno.

Although Ino had liked him first and Sakura had been the one to end their friendship over a boy, the pink haired girl was the one to be placed on his team. The one to be given the coveted spot of being the one who Sasuke would see every day for years on end, the one who he would grow close to and maybe even learn to love. It was a pungent, discomforting fact that Ino found difficult to accept. They were hostile to each other about it, as well. They both hid behind their words, lying like weasels and clawing at each other like violent birds. So was the ever lasting irony that when he left them both, years later there had been rumours that he had found someone on his team that talked to them. Birds, that was.

But Sakura being placed on his team had been the start of it all. Sakura, the one who usually started an exchange of unpleasant words and phrases with her each time their eyes met. Sakura, who held him close whilst he became overcome with some strange power Ino could never pretend to understand. Sakura, who had cut off the long hair that Sasuke had preferred, according to some rumour when they were five. When Ino cut her hair too, she had just done it so she could use it as part of a trap in their fight in the chunin exams. The fight she should have won, because Sakura already had her precious Sasuke and Ino had a higher level of skill anyway. Sakura didn't even have any special techniques, yet she had drawn with her. That was a humiliation in itself, that she had ended on an even par with someone so useless.

When she found out Sasuke had left though, Sakura had continued to cut her hair short. As far as Ino was concerned, Sakura could hope for all she was worth that the new Team Seven could bring Kakashi back, she could learn all the skills she wanted from Tsunade and she could pray to God for an eternity but the simple fact was that Sasuke probably didn't want to come back. Cutting her hair wasn't going to do much for her looks, either. If Sasuke ever did see her again, because they did live in that small a world, he would probably look at Sakura and wonder what went wrong. But when he saw Ino, he could eat his heart out.

She had let her hair grow again. She had done it so that if she ever saw him, he would know that nothing had changed in her eyes. They were still the same as they always had been, fighting for his affection and growing stronger with each passing day. He had to learn the hard way that change really had happened, that Ino had grown much stronger and that with the help of the rest of Team Ten (her friends who she couldn't be prouder of being put in the same group as) she could kill him if she wanted to. Because change happens, and she didn't love him anymore. She wanted to love Sai instead, because he actually cared about her enough to spare a few words that Sasuke never had. That memory of despair Sasuke had created was nothing anymore, not to her at least.

But then again, maybe Sasuke would look at her with his crimson eyes, the black dots spinning in hypnotising circles and know. Just as she could enter minds with her jutsu, he could enter minds with his eyes and look around for caged doors like the ones that held the beast inside Naruto captive. Look around for caged doors that held secrets, bigger ones than he could probably see on the surface. She wanted to love Sai, she really did. She wanted to love him because he was like Sasuke. He was beautiful. He was perfect. But she also wanted to love him because he wasn't like Sasuke at all. He actually cared about people. Just maybe, even underneath that, Sasuke would even see the truth. Sakura could have had both Sasuke and Sai. Her heart belonged to Shikamaru, even if she tried to fight and deny it. She knew it was true from the moment he had kissed her.

Plus, just as her mother had said, she who was winsome would win him. Although Shikamaru had said he liked average girls, it was pretty obvious he didn't if he was actually attracted to her. Because Ino was still prettier than Sakura, right? Being prettier than Sakura wasn't a sin. But despair in God, his world he had created, the lack of love for it that was sloth?

That was, and it made _sloth_ Ino's second sin.

* * *

_Ira._ **Anger. **_**Wrath.**_

It was barely a few weeks later when everything went wrong.

Temari knew what had happened. Ino didn't know how she knew, because she had never said a word about it. But Shikamaru did talk to her a lot, they were close friends. Border lining romance, in Temari's case. The other blonde hadn't shown her anger at Ino though, and Ino dreaded to think why. Temari was her friend, and her sin had been the ultimate betrayal. It was only right for Temari to hate her, to want to hurt her and scream at her and show anger. But she hadn't. She'd just said those calm, oxygen cutting words that almost made her unable to breathe once she had heard them.

"Ino, I know what happened. With Shikamaru." The awkward words had hung deadly in the air. Ino hadn't dared to meet her eyes, ashamed of herself and knowing that Temari was treating her too well, too kindly for what she had done. Then again, she had heard someone say that one definition of wrath was a love of justice, perverted to revenge and spite. For that reason, suicide was supposed to be the ultimate expression of wrath as it was a final rejection of the gifts God had given to the entire universe, including humankind.

As she laid a single white rose on the cold stone a month after, she thought the meaning of innocence did fit well. But the other two meanings of purity and heavenly did not.

She had shown the worst of _wrath_, and for that Temari was a sinner.

* * *

_Invidia._ **Resentment. **_**Envy.**_

Ino doesn't know who to envy the most out of all the other kunoichi her age.

Tenten, because she's in love with Neji who loves her too and they're just far too blind to see it because he's going to be forced to marry someone in the family eventually. Because they know if they accepted their mutual feelings towards one another, it wouldn't change much anyway. Nothing could be done about their predicament, and each day they lived only extended the wanting they each had for each other.

Hinata, because Naruto still doesn't quite understand that she's in love with him although he is nearly sixteen and by that age he should at least nearly be able to understand the females he is surrounded by and because somehow it feels like that will never change. It feels like he will always have eyes for Sakura, and that because of this Hinata will probably never be happy although Kiba wants to make her so, not that she had ever realised that herself because Kiba was too good an actor.

Sakura, because she's just as big a liar as Tsunade is by saying that she does not, at all, hold any romantic feelings towards Naruto whatsoever. Just as Tsunade said about Jiriya. History was doomed to repeat itself in her apprentice, and Tsunade never once had brought herself to tell Sakura that. But Ino knew, because whenever she and Tsunade locked eyes she got a desperately pleading look from her that just begged her not to tell, not to think it was that was because this was the future and for her apprentice there was always a possibility that everything would be alright, even if deep down she knew it wouldn't be.

Yet she envied them, pitiful as they all were, because she was worse. She was the one who had what she wanted, until she gave him up for a friend who didn't seem to understand that at all. A friend who had sinned with wrath, not thinking of the consequences or what could have truly happened. What they both felt madly about, with Ino rejecting those thoughts and feelings of temptation for years. The words between them that had changed them both, and just that one kiss that had kick started it all. It made her hate that friend all the more, it made her want her back, and it made her envious of her beyond reasonable belief.

It was Temari who she _envied _the most, because she got to take the easy way out.

Shikamaru never once told her how much he had envied Sasuke for years, and how much he envied Sai now because he seemed to be the object of her affections. He never once told Ino that he envied all those around her, even Chouji, when they were close to her. He never once told Ino that he envied everyone near her, everyone that nearly had her that wasn't him. Because he'd almost had her, and he'd wanted her so much it physically hurt.

_Envy _blinded them both, though self pity and the want of love.

* * *

_Superbia. _**Hubris / vanity. **_**Pride.**_

Pride was what caused Lucifer to fall from Heaven, and pride was the most dangerous sin.

They had both heard stories of God, no matter what they chose to believe in. They both knew that it was the most dangerous sin for this reason, for it was the sin from which all the other sins had arisen. It was the core of all corruption, all lies, all trickery, and all deceit. All the things they acted with on a daily basis, just to keep things going between themselves.

The desire to be more important or attractive than others was part of it. Ino had always wanted to be better than Sakura, she had always wanted to have Sasuke and Sai like Sakura had and always wanted to be prettier than her because of the words her deceased mother had said. It was like a sickening obsession, one that wasn't just a phase. It had stuck with her for years, and she had never quite been able to let go of it. Shikamaru was just as bad, desiring to be more important than Sasuke or Sai to Ino, to stand out, to let her know that he existed and have her love him as he loved her.

The failure to give compliments to each other when they deserved it was a second part of it, contributing to their final downfall due to sin. They never told each other what was right about each other, what was good, having petty arguments over her loudness and his laziness. She never once told Shikamaru how good a team leader he was, and he never once told her how beautiful she was to him.

The excessive self love of both was the third a final part of their puzzle. Ino had always been vain, caring for herself and looks far too much because she wanted to be beautiful. More beautiful than anyone else, especially Sakura. To fit the nickname her father gave her of Princess, and to fit the ideology of her mother. Shikamaru knew he could think of plans, he knew that he was smart and he had always relied on that as a back up plan for if everything went wrong. Especially with Ino, because that over self dependence had grown even more with time after the amount of botched missions he had taken part in. The retrieval of Sasuke, where he had let Ino down just as badly as Naruto had Sakura and nearly got his entire team killed, and only around a year before the fight with Hidan and Kakuzu that had resulted in a significant loss of their sensei, and he hadn't even allowed Chouji or Ino to help him kill the man who had taken someone dear to them because he was so certain he could do it himself. All the lessons Asuma had given them on team work had gone from his head in an instant.

"It's pride that keeps us apart, Ino." He whispered to her, on their third and final botched mission as they lay on the mud, faced turned slightly to the side to mutter almost loving nothings to each other from cracked and bloodied lips.

"No, it's pride that keeps us together, and Heaven that keeps us apart." Ino quietly breathed between laboured breaths, lifting a hand to softly trace his lips with her crimson soaked finger. She'd attempted a summoning like he told her, and it had made things none the better.

"Heaven won't let us in, we're both sinners." He said, and as much as he didn't want it to be true he knew it was. Ino was a sinner, and even if he did manage to get her into some form of Heaven he'd never be able to go there with her.

"We don't need Heaven. We can sit outside the gates, I don't mind. As long as we have each other, Shikamaru, I don't care." She said softly, and he smiled for the first time in years as he hand withdrew and lay flat by her side.

"How long, Ino?" He asked, finding his voice to ask something he needed to know if he died. He needed to know how long she had loved him, how long she had cared and not told him. How long they had continued their meaningless façade, continuing their sins.

She didn't answer. But he hoped they'd be forgiven for their _pride_, and the rest of their sins.

As his eyes closed, the rain began to pour down on their bones as a sign of hope, a sign of cleanliness and a sign they were being cleansed when Team Seven found them in a bloody mess, bodies mangled and Shikamaru's lifeless hand gently placed on top of Ino's, clinging to her blue tinted startlingly white fingers.

With the rain their sins were washed away, and neither of them could be called a sinner.

* * *

Angst. Angst. Angst. Extremely long angst at that.

What is it with me and angst lately?

Reviews are loved. :)


	8. The Redeemer

Summary: _Nobody should ever bother to search for a reason for unconditional love. They will never, ever, in an entire eternity find one._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Recently, Demonic Angel Clone informed me that someone had stole the first chapter of this and the summary of theme seven, and then used one of the Latin sin names as a title. Jatherine, for being a complete and utter thief, I commend you. You clearly have no shame, saying how you worked so hard on it, and then not only stealing my work but also the work of other people who you then have the gall to dedicate it to. You really need to learn what it means when you have taken something too far, and the meaning of the word shame. It would do you some good. Moving on from this unpleasantness, thank you to all those who have reviewed so far and those who have added this to their favourites list and alerted. Thank you so much! Especially to Demonic Angel Clone, it is nice to know that someone still has a sense of morality when they see that somebody has done something wrong. This one is dedicated to you, and sort of runs in parallel to the previous chapter.

Now, **Theme Eight: Our own world.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

_**The Redeemer**_

* * *

_Castitas_. **Purity. **_**Chastity.**_

Contrary to what most people seemed to believe in Konoha, Ino did not get around.

Sure, she had a few dates. Some with fellow shinobi, who truly understood what it was like in the life she led. The constant threat of waking up in a few years time, with most of all of your friends no longer around, and wondering why you ever took fighting to survive as a job anyway. They were the unluckiest of all, not knowing what they had achieved. Even being one of those kids, the ones who ended up with the names carved into cold grey stone, were better of than that. They didn't have to live with constant mental torment, because they couldn't think anymore. They couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't breathe. They were the lucky ones, those who were killed in action. Usually shinobi would rush things for this reason, wanting to have a family quickly. At a young age, even though it was frowned upon by those who did not understand their ways. Most shinobi had got used to it, living as they did, all sinners already with blood tainted hands and hardly seeing how being chaste could make a difference for that reason. They needed some enjoyment, some relaxation, it was always said.

But even so, Ino always denied their offers furiously. The ones that were whispered heatedly when close enough, expressed silently when playing footsy under a table and more prominently shown with the ever dreaded question of if she wanted to stay for a while, perhaps for a cup of coffee or tea or something. Stay by their side, the real question behind that was. Would she, at least for that night? The answer was always no, every single time. She had no desire to be like those people. She began to see them as the weak ones, those with broken minds who believed they would not like past twenty. She knew the odds were stacked against them, but there was no need to be pessimistic. Their groups, the ones now that were beginning to reach the prime, the Konoha eleven, none of them needed such worries. They were all students of exceptional calibre, or so they were told. Their rate of failed missions was next to nothing, and their teachers had been the best. There was no way that they could be destroyed that easily.

She carried on telling herself that when her father simply didn't wake up.

Although everything was so very wrong, she managed not to shed a tear. She managed to look perfect throughout the funeral, no matter how shattered she was. Because when she had been looking silently at Shikato, she knew that he was worse. Chouji had kept comfortingly whispering to her, saying it was ok to cry, that nobody would resent her for it. Shikato, Chouza, Yoshino, everyone – they had all cried – everyone but her. Even he was crying as he said it, but still Ino did not let a single tear fall. She bit her lip roughly and made it bleed to distract herself with pain, ignoring her prickling nose and the stinging corners of her eyes. She refused to let herself cry, she refused. Even when Shikamaru slipped his hand in hers and gave it a tight squeeze to let her know that it was ok, she refused flat out. They shouldn't be crying, they should be celebrating what he had achieved. What he had done, his strength and the beauty of what he had contributed to their home. She didn't tell Shikamaru this, even when he kept his grasp on her hand firm and dragged her away from the funeral. He truly thought she was a head case, not crying for her last remaining family member. She probably was, but who cared anyway? Her father had always been proud and strict, but if he ever saw her crying he would immediately have a change in attitude and spoil her to the core. She had learnt at a young age that crocodile tears got her what she wanted.

She didn't complain when Shikamaru led her to his bedroom stall, and sat her in front of the mirror. He told her that she was a beautiful, strong, kunoichi and that nobody would judge her. If she looked in her reflection, she would see that her father would live on in her, live on in Shikato and Chouza, and in Team Ten (InoShikaChou) for as long as they lived. She didn't even complain when he tried to kiss her to make it better, not on the cheek but on the lips. She didn't complain because she kissed him back, her hand beginning to roam over his mesh shirt, willing to peel it off him before she managed to pull herself away.

She'd heard the door click downstairs, and it was only a matter of seconds before Yoshino began to shout to her son to come downstairs. Ino walked out of his bedroom with him without saying a word, and then with a rushed goodbye once she was downstairs she had left. Yoshino had stared at her back sadly as she left, but said nothing as she looked to Shikamaru. Something seemed wrong, and it wasn't just the fact that Inoichi had passed on and left his little girl alone in the world. She had a feeling that it was something to do with her son, but nothing confirmed her suspicion other than him not being able to meet her eyes.

No, Ino did not seep with random men, contrary to the rumours. The rumours that told lies about her, never the truth, especially the one about a certain team mate, which Yoshino later heard being whispered between two kunoichi in a grocery store. They said how she had seduced him, and on the day of the funeral of her father they had did the deed. Yoshino had told them both firmly that it was a pile of rubbish before she left, a smirk on her face at their astounded expressions. Ino wasn't like that, and Shikamaru would never do such a thing. Especially not on that day. She ignored the nagging doubts in the back of her mind, and she was certain Ino would not do that to Shikamaru. Yoshino knew that most rumours were lies, anyway. She wasn't stupid.

She would have been shocked if she knew that rumour was half truthful.

* * *

_Temperantia_. **Restraint. **_**Temperance.**_

Self-control was not something that came easy either Ino or Shikamaru.

He had trained with the passing of time, watching her dance around and flit about like some sort of paper butterfly. First around Sasuke when they were a few years younger, and now around Sai. She seemed smitten with him the moment she met him, much to the discontent of both him and (or so it seemed) Sakura. Ino later said how Sakura had whispered to her that it was pointless, that Sai didn't understand. But it appeared he had, why else would he call her gorgeous? Even so, Shikamaru had said nothing to Ino in reply about this. He knew why. Because Ino was unknowingly able to draw people in, make them care about her. It was like a natural gift, people flocked to her. He supposed it was because she was so beautiful, so smart and so good at faking care in some situations. That wasn't why he was drawn to her, though. He couldn't explain why he was, but he liked to blame it on none of these things and blame it on their parents instead. He liked to think it was because they had known each other for so long. Yes, Shikamaru had practiced restraint every day since the age of five when he had just wanted to hold her hand because she was a pretty girl. But now, he wanted to do other things as well which were not exactly a sign of friendship and his patience was beginning to wear thin with the fact that she could be just as oblivious as Naruto and so out of his league.

She didn't have the chance to train against her feelings at all. She always told herself since that incident that she didn't have feelings for him, that he had just done it in an attempt to make her feel better and that it had simply got out of hand. She hadn't gained the same years of self control he had, the same restraint to not tell him on the spot that she had some sort of vague feelings for him, that she felt he was more than just a friend, that she doubted Team Ten would ever be the same because she wasn't him. She couldn't just forget things like that, not when they were making her fall for him. It was too hard. No matter how much she tried to force herself to, she just couldn't let go of it. She liked him a little bit, maybe she even loved him. Who knew? She certainly didn't. He confused her head and her heart far too much.

"Clouds are hard to grasp, but beautiful. Do you think they are like someone, Ino?"

So when he had that irresistible lazy grin on his face in the usual Team Ten training field due to her lack of being able to answer his question, she had to stop herself from either hitting him or kissing him. Chouji had only stared at her confusion and beetroot red cheeks from anger and humiliation before she stormed off, swearing violently under her breath. Swearing had never suited her; they seemed to be foreign words coming from her mouth. Shikamaru watched her retreating back with a small smile. Maybe if Chouji hadn't been here, God bless his best friend, the plan might have worked. His plan of action.

His plan to make her show a little less restraint.

* * *

_Liberalitas_. **Generosity. **_**Liberality.**_

They wanted to give each other something.

They both wanted to give each other some kisses, tender with smooth lips on cheeks, hands and lips. They both wanted to hold each other close, to hear the heart of the other beating wildly and yet rhythmically as they made each other flush. They wanted be near each other, showing their generosity by gladly handing over their hearts to one another. But every time they tried, something stopped them.

The words in their throat became loose dances. Awkward, stilted, harsh dances that they would never attempt through fear of the imperfections of it all. The dance could be taken part in by both of them, but every time they tried their words for feet seemed to creep away back into their suspecting throats. Their tangos were never carried out, their mambas never swayed and their ballets were still waiting to be started. Maybe they were afraid of missing out a few words, a few steps in their perfectly synchronised dance or maybe because they were both too scared to even say the words.

Maybe, just until Ino had decided to be generous enough for the both of them. Grabbing his wrists, pinning him against the wall and staring directly into the eyes of his ANBU mask then smiling like a madwoman she had finally lent in and whispered warm words in his ear.

"I could fall in love with you, Shikamaru."

Before he could catch his breath, she was gone. Down the street, pale blonde hair floating behind her back. He could have stopped her, tugged on the back of her short purple top like a child tugging on the skirt of a female family member. He could have shouted at her, thrown his porcelain mask to the floor and let it shatter, begging and pleading for her to come back and tell him if what she had said was true. Tell him how she had known it was him underneath the mask, when he didn't even think she knew him as well as he though that she liked to think he did. Tell him that it was ok, it didn't matter that it was too late for him. Even when he knew she was gone completely, he didn't run to her little apartment building or even attempt to find her, because there was always a chance that she did care that it was too late, tell him that he was a fool to have ever thought that she might actually care instead of just wanting to.

"It's too late for me, Ino. I've already fallen."

It was the most generous, giving thing he had ever said. The most caring, the most sensitive and unknowingly beautiful. Holding one of his wrists in hand, he knew that her warmth was wasted on him for that reason. Apparently being charitable was most rewarded in the home of God when it went unknown, but that didn't matter to him just then. Because she hadn't heard the one thing he had always wanted to say, and she had more guts than him to say it beforehand in a much more subtle way. It was shameful really, his secret generosity.

Because she never heard those exact words escape his lips.

* * *

_Industria_. **Persistence / effort. **_**Diligence.**_

Everything had become a shambles.

He'd requested a specific team. It had been a simple powerful one with good leadership, consisting of himself, Naruto, Kiba and Sakura. He hadn't really counted on Sakura not being around and already being off on a mission with what long ago had been referred to as Team Gai. It never even crossed his mind. So he got his team, but he got his team with the wrong female. Pink hair was replaced with blonde, sea foam green with cobalt blue, and a woman with deadly raw strength traded for a woman with deadly mind terrorising. Both could tear people apart. The former in just body, the latter in body and mind. He could complain all he wanted too, declaring how troublesome that made things. But Asuma couldn't hear that excuse anymore, so he didn't know why he had bothered using it. The simple reason probably was he didn't want her on his team.

If he had Sakura, he wouldn't be worried about putting her in danger. She always thought things through, unless she was extremely enraged. He rarely saw her like that however, so trusted her to keep calm in the now routine ANBU missions. She was good at the missions in which tactics could be used. However, he ended up with Ino. He worried about putting her in danger much more than anyone else. She was the last of her clan, the last with her techniques that were so renowned in the interrogation department and spying fields. She thought things through sometimes, but she was better for missions in which only raw power and destruction were needed as she was so good at creating mayhem. With her skill she could change minds over and over whilst he waited in the shadows undetected, confusing the enemies that became filled with terror upon thinking that she could be inside the body of one of their comrades. They would end up thinking only of themselves, and tearing each other apart. She rarely needed to get her own hands dirty, as long as she looked like she was still in the mind of one of them. He could release and recapture shadows as necessary, so none of them ever even got near to harming her. This was also the very reason he did not like the idea of having her on the same ANBU missions as him. She was better suited for destruction, tearing things apart and creating chaos. Her infiltration skills were good, that was certain, but if she was by herself at any point she could be in immense danger if nobody was guarding her body. If anyone got the idea to simply attack her in their simple minds, which would be the end of her unless she could take on a group of what was usually ten or more shinobi using just raw power without any mental tricks. He didn't want to put her in that danger.

Maybe in their own world, something like that wouldn't have happened. Maybe they wouldn't even be in high ranks, or maybe they wouldn't even be in their line of work. Maybe if they weren't both ninja, both on the same team, they would have allowed themselves to be together. Maybe it was possible, their families had known each other long enough and maybe their feelings would even be able to be around in it too. In that alternate universe, in their own world. Where nothing could harm them, nothing could even so much as touch them and _oh crap oh crap oh crap _Kiba and Ino were both losing blood_. The mission was becoming a mess_.They could imagine their own world, but maybe that wasn't good enough for that reason. Even in that, there were still things that could harm them and tear them apart.

Ino pumped chakra into Kiba as carefully and skilfully as she could, the show that it was working and the fact that she was tending his wounds over her own even though he was protesting about it a sign of her sheer pigheadedness. Or maybe it was patience, diligence. She had become so devoted to training lately it was almost as though she had changed completely, It was making her harsher, more merciless than ever knowing that she could stop their chakra flow with a few blows or paralyse them if she needed to buy time. They were not supposed to be able to know who their tem mates were as they were never informed, and their masks were not just to hide their features from enemies but also from comrades who could compromise their mission in order to save them because of the emotions they were told they weren't supposed to have. But even with the mask, it was obvious to all of them who was who. Techniques, hair, voices, so many things made it obvious. He looked at her calmly, a smile hidden under his mask. One day they would have their own world, their own world in this world they already lived in, regardless of anything that stood in their way.

He would persist diligently in this world until they could call it that.

* * *

_Patientia_. **Forbearance. _Patience._**

"Shikamaru, I don't have the patience to wait for you forever."

Ino said it so softly, so sweetly that her words threw him into a mental turmoil. He had told himself he would continue to work hard, to persist diligently in order to make things better for the both of them so they would have their own world in the world that they already coexisted in, but how long would that take? He hadn't really thought about that before, it hadn't seemed important, it hadn't seemed necessary, as long as they were both still there. It seemed they could have all the time in the world if they wanted it, but judging by her words it did not seem that she cared. She needed something, she needed somebody, someone like him to rely on, and she couldn't wait around for him forever when so many other people wanted to offer her the same thing as he did.

He didn't know she sobbed that night. She never told him, and that was the reason he could have known. Because ever since she was young, she had hidden behind her words. Nobody would know the headstrong, confident Yamanaka would mean the opposite to what she said. She would tell boys she liked them when they asked her on the few dates she'd been on when she didn't at all, she'd tell herself Sakura was behind her although she could see she was catching up and about to surpass her, but what she had just told Shikamaru was the biggest most disgusting lie of them all. Because she did have the patience to wait for him, she loved him that much that she had no doubts that she could.

Patiently wait for him forever, that was.

* * *

_Humanitas_. **Peace. _Kindness._**

She had once asked him why he even cared about her.

"I don't need reasons."

That had been his reply. It was one of the most truthful things he ever said. He didn't know why himself, how he managed to care about her, how he managed to like her, how he managed to fall in love with her. They were both stubborn. She was beautiful, he was plain. She was loud, he was reserved. She was energetic, and in her own words he was lazy. She was everything he wasn't, and he was everything she needed.

"Good, because neither do I."

With that, she had tackled him to the grassy floor and kissed him. Kindness was by definition love, compassion, friendship and sympathy without prejudice and for its own sake. They hadn't needed reasons for their compassion, although they had said they needed to look out for each other as members of the new generation of InoShikaChou when they were young. They hadn't needed reasons for friendship, although they had said it was only because they were on the same team a few years ago when they had been in an argument. Neither of them, however, could think of a reason for their love of each other. Maybe it was just because of kindness. That could have been a good reason. Or maybe they just finally realised neither of them needed one. They finally figured it out. Nobody should ever bother to search for a reason for unconditional love.

"Ino, marry me."

They will never, ever, in an entire eternity find one.

* * *

_Humilitas_. **Modesty. **_**Humility.**_

"You know, I think you've done it, Shikamaru."

She smiled although she was crying, though her tears were not from sadness. They were from happiness, from joy, from a million and one emotions that were rushing through both of them in a confusing but wanted blur. It was almost scary, but it was ok. They had each other, they were able to cling to the hands of one another and know that they'd make their way through what they had achieved together. He heard the announcement, he could kiss her.

His lips crashed to hers, and cheers rang out. A roar from the people assembled in the area, cries of congratulations and good wishes. As he pulled away, he noted one thing. Throughout it all, she had never looked more beautiful. He was rarely one to give compliments or one to accept them unless they were needed, for he was a modest man and she was a modest woman. But they were both deserving of them on that day, and hearing her words before their kiss made tingles run down his spine.

"So do I."

He kissed her again, her answer cut off by his lips pressing heatedly on hers again and again. He heard someone that was surely Sakura call out somewhere in the background that Ino pig had never and would never look more beautiful, and for that reason he remembered his thoughts and whispered it into her ear even as their entire party began to leave and make their way towards the barbeque shop where their small party was being held, for which Chouji was thankful. The owner had been kind to them, seeing his patrons grow through the years and eventually end up in this situation giving him a new shine in his eyes as he remembered the good old days where they used to constantly bicker over a hearty lunch there.

They finally had it. Nothing would change that, nothing at all. Respect and credit were due to Shikamaru, and also to Ino. Through everything they had stuck with each other, and even though later Ino had complained it was the most unromantic proposal ever with a soft smile and a stifled giggle that was ok. Due to their goodness, allowing virtues in their life, they had been granted what they had wanted.

With their marriage, they had their own world.

* * *

Sappy, shameless fluff at the end there. Sort of counter parted their sinful ways in the previous one, with the sins that led to their ultimate downfall. Virtues lead to good things, see? Good morals give good endings. Well, in this case anyway. I am capable of a remotely happy piece of work. Once again, a huge thank you to Demonic Angel Clone. Anyone reading this, follow her example when aware of things that are happening which are not fair. The kindness of strangers can be a beautiful thing. If anyone can guess at that sort of reference, a triple kudos to you.

Reviews are loved. :)

* * *


	9. The Writer

Summary: _Princesses were never supposed to fall in love with people beneath their social status. Not in traditional fairytales, it just didn't happen._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Fifty one hour parties, extreme dress shopping, orange fighting and somehow I still manage to fit in some time for writing some of my good old favourite pairing of Shikamaru and Ino. I surprise myself sometimes with this series, but it is probably due to the deadline and not wanting to miss it.

Now, **Theme Nine: Dash.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Writer_**

* * *

_Dot. Dash. Dot. Dot. Dot._

Ino stared down at the paper in front of her. A string of punctuation marks covered the first line oddly, her small and neat handwriting sloping up and down inside the ruled bar. She did not know what to write. She had a million and one, no, a million and six, even more things to write to him but not one of the things she could write could sum up what she wanted to say. Something was always there that she wasn't sure she wanted to be inked on paper, or something was always left out. It was never quite right, never quite perfect, never quite the way she really wanted it to be. So instead of attempting to write the letter any longer, she had resorted to dabbing an unremarkable line of punctuation across the top line on the sheet.

How had it come to this? This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to end up with a lazy slob, and said lazy slob wasn't supposed to end up with anyone who would be seen as too good for him. Especially not a Princess. Princesses were never supposed to fall in love with people beneath their social status. Not in traditional fairytales, it just didn't happen. She was a Princess, although she had no title. She was supposed to end up with her Prince, and live her fairytale life where everything was absolutely perfect.

Nobody ever mentioned that her plans would be ruined if she became a ninja and somehow still clung vainly to the hope that her Prince would come. Sasuke Uchiha was once the boy she championed; who she was sure anyone in earshot knew was going to be hers. Yet now she was older, and he was still a boy but not yet a man. She was a girl, but not yet a woman. Usually by now, people were married in their fairy tales. But she couldn't, no; she wouldn't allow Sasuke to be her Prince anymore. Not even if he came back to Konoha and begged her, she simply would not. Sai would make a pretty good Prince, she supposed, but she had to face the fact that although he called her beautiful something felt wrong with that.

Ino had an idea. A brilliant, wonderful, stupendous idea. Ripping the piece of paper to shreds, she ransacked her room to find her notepad. Tearing one purple sheet of paper out, she began to make a web of ideas across the page. It all fit too well. Reaching for the pad again, she began to write, and sometime under two hours later it was finished. She read it over a couple of times and checked it, scribbling out certain things that she didn't like and editing some parts to make it funnier or sadder. Anything she could think of, really. The amount of effort going into it was large, and when she finally emerged from her room in the early hours of the next morning she was certain that what she had in the notebook in her hands was the final product of what she had wanted to do.

Throwing the notebook into a brown envelope with a biro from her desk in an instant, she wrote his name on it in purple ink and sealed it. Before she could regret it, she forced herself out of the house and down the road to reach the forest his family owned. She passed the deer munching the grass without a sound, and by the time she reached his front door she was still certain that nobody knew that she was there. Hastily shoving the envelope through his door, she turned around ready to face an empty field with a sigh of relief upon completing her self-assigned mission.

She nearly screamed when she saw him right in front of her. He had clearly been behind her the entire time, and she hadn't been as discreet as she thought she had. He looked down at her, one hand playing with the end of his permanently stuck up ponytail with an amused look on his face. Probably because he had seen the alarm she had shown for a few seconds before composing herself when she saw him there, she knew that much. Fighting the desire to smack him around the face as hard as she could (either that or run) she strained a smile at the shadow manipulating genius.

"Sneaking around on the property of my family with no entering our home to nag me about missing training the other week? Is that envelope you just posted into my house that important, Ino?" He mused. She glared at him fiercely, her ferocious look being able to send any lesser man running in fear. But he had grown used to it after so many years, the steely ice glare becoming ineffective. It no longer served as a warning, because he no longer needed them. He knew what annoyed her, what she liked, what made her tick. She was a puzzle, she was his friend, and because of this he knew to expect the unexpected from her. But running around his property so early in the morning, the time he began to feed the animals to be exact, was just a little odder than normal. He was interested in what she was doing, and had a feeling if she told him the truth the answer wouldn't be disappointing.

"Nice to see you too, Shikamaru. No, it isn't, actually. I was just wondering if you'd take a look at the files because Godaime-sama recommended that I ask you, but it doesn't matter. So if you don't mind, can I have them back now?" She grinned as she babbled. All charm, no sense. He sighed because it was so obvious. She was lying. Lying through her teeth, to be exact. She was a good liar usually, but now she was flustered. Worried. Trying to hide something from him, and he wasn't quite sure what it was. But he was pretty certain that whatever it happened to be, the answer would be in the envelope.

"I'll look over them anyway; you don't want to annoy her. You know what she's like." He said, ignoring the fact it was a lie. If she didn't want to be caught out, she'd play along with it. Either that, or try to persuade him not to read them. He saw her eyes flash, the usual sign of danger. She knew what he was trying to do, and it wasn't going to work. She was too quick to figure him out now, and she didn't like it when he tried to win. She always won, whether he liked it or not. Unless she knew that it was pointless to argue her case, usually on mission, as they were the few times when she knew he was always correct. Not that he wasn't every other time, of course. It was just that it was a waste of time to argue with somebody as pigheaded as her, because she would not give up. But he didn't care this time. He was intrigued, and he wanted to figure out just what was so special that she wanted to hide it from him.

"Fine, you win. I lied. Now give it back." She demanded, her hands immediately going to her hips, elbows jaunting out as her arms bent. Her glare was back, and her anger evident. She did not like to be messed about with, and he knew that all too well from the bruises he had earned in the past. But this time, just like all the others, another injury would be worth it.

"No. You came here with it for a reason." He said. Upon hearing those words, she immediately grabbed the front of his mesh shirt and pulled him forward so that they were face to face. Blue eyes locked with his dark brown ones, and he felt his heart race. She was terrifying, but even so she was still the most beautiful girl he knew. If she wasn't so hostile, maybe that sort of situation would have been better. Damn, no. She was his team mate, his friend, and sometimes even the person he confided in. A little flutter of attraction towards her was nothing to act on, she'd never forgive him. Scratch that, he'd never forgive himself.

"Shikamaru, don't you dare try to mess with me." Ino hissed, heated breath tickling his lips. Why was she so seductive? She must have known that he was becoming more attracted to her with each passing second, but even so she acted insanely oblivious. He was sure it would pass though, it always had. It was just that she was so pretty, so utterly amazing that nobody would have been able to help it. Not even him, who had known her since she was a five year old with a blue tongue from a bubblegum flavoured popsicle. She was simply too Ino, it was impossible not to be attracted to her. Unless you were insane, or you were asexual. Infact, he was pretty even some of those nutcases in interrogation where she worked most of time now liked her a little bit. Crazy, really, bearing in mind they had seen her tear other men apart.

"I'm not messing with you, I just want to know what's in the envelope." He replied as calmly as he could manage. She released his shirt, and he stumbled back slightly. He needed to stay away from her. Being attracted to women was natural, but becoming attracted to her like he was would be suicidal. He could easily have been attracted to a different girl, someone who wasn't a kunoichi and someone average like he had always said he wanted. But he wasn't. He was attracted to the daring, mad, beautiful Yamanaka Ino.

"Fine, go ahead. Open it, but you'll just think it's stupid." She breathed before storming off, clearly still full of rage. Whoever she came across next he had to feel sorry for, because they would probably get their head torn off. Unless it was Sakura, in which case he felt sorry for all those nearby. There would be a storm if that happened. But that didn't matter right then. Was she being serious? Opening his front door, he stared at the envelope on the floor almost as though it would explode if he touched it. Picking it up carefully, he ripped the top of the envelope off and tipped the small item he could feel inside it onto his hand. A notebook and a pen? That was all she hadn't wanted him to see? She had changed her mind about him reading a notebook she posted though his door, and perhaps accidently giving him a pen? She really was driving herself insane like Chouji said, with all the extra work entering the heads of others in the interrogation department.

He was even more surprised once he began to read the contents. It was the start of a story about a beautiful Princess named Kana, a fantasy she had begun to create. It wasn't half bad, especially seeing as there was a character he began to rather like. A lazy wanderer, who was both intelligent and cunning but didn't seem to be evil. His name was Ogano, and he was close friends with an apparently rather portly man named Yasahiro. Ogano and company went under the group name of Tobikuma. In this group they did good deeds, and Shikamaru found most of the story amusing. He had stopped reading books without factual information a long time ago, but this story was enjoyable. However, it cut off about halfway through when Ogano met Haruka in an abandoned stable where she kept some horses without anybody else knowing. He was pretty sure why he had the pen then. He had never been creative, and she knew that. But even so, that was ok.

He smiled as he began to write.

* * *

_Kozakura struck the Princess, __and Masago said not a word about her actions._

Shikamaru stared at what Ino had put down this time. It had been the fifth time he had the notebook, and by now the story they had been writing was coming along quite nicely. A dozen new characters had been added in, and each of them had an idea behind them. One he had invented was Masago, a wind nymph who was close friends with the Princess until they had both fallen in love with the same man (well, according to Ino anyway) who had yet to be indentified. He had a feeling it would end in the same sort of relationship the Princess Kana had with Kozakura, who had ended her friendship with the Princess after finding out the Prince Raiden planned to court her. Strangely, their fantasy story was apparently wonderful. Well, according to Chouji anyway. He had stumbled upon the book at Ino's, thinking it was just something she had started writing long ago. He tactfully didn't mention a fair amount of it being in Shikamaru's writing, as he felt rather embarrassed about it. It was then he thanked God that he was on the same team as someone who was so careful not to hurt the feelings of anybody else and was so kind.

But there was something else he began to notice about the characters. They seemed to fairly mimic people they actually knew. Ogano, the character he had originally taken to (the lazy wanderer) was like him. Only when Chouji pointed this out he realised, although he never mentioned it to Ino. Like he never mentioned Ogano literally meant 'little deer' or 'field', and that the group both he and Yasahiro belonged to (Tobikuma) was 'little cloud'. Ino had probably intended it to be that way, even if she said nothing about it.

That was ok, because he never said anything about how he was letting his own feelings slip into the character of Ogano whenever it was his turn to write. Princess Kana had never been described before he had control of the notebook, and so he had said she had long pale blonde hair that shone more lusciously than any moon and glassy blue eyes that shimmered like the gorgeous cerulean water of the sea. Whenever Kana was in danger (although she was able to defend herself well) he always tried to have Ogano aid her. Deep down, he was sure of why.

Just as Ino had (probably) intentionally made Ogano like him, he had made Princess Kana like her. He had even made Ogano have some hints of feelings towards Kana. Ino acted oblivious however, simply penning whatever came to mind during the desperate situations that they put the heroes of their work through. But that was ok, for now. This was the first time they had began to write together though, and even though he was the one doing the writing and Ino was leaning on his shoulder to see the notebook better and acting lazy he didn't mind for once. Their ideas were flowing brilliantly now that they were writing together for once, and Ino wasn't arguing against everything he had an idea about. She actually agreed with most of them. The new peace was sort of comforting, really.

_Ogano was angered deeply, and stood in front of the Princess to shield her. A second blow hit his chest, but he ignored the sharp pain created by the small fists of Kozakura._

"Shikamaru, why does Ogano always defend Kana? She's so cruel to him." Ino muttered as she looked down at his scrawled writing. It looked terrible in comparison to her neat print, but she didn't seem to mind that. He looked at the girl leaning on his shoulder, a small smile on his face. She asked some of the strangest questions.

"Because he loves her, Ino. Regardless of the fact she loved the Prince Raiden on first sight." He replied, and she stared up at him with her blue eyes. His heart began to race again, just as it had when she had grabbed him all those months ago and demanded that he didn't need the envelope and that he had to give it back to her. He swallowed the lump he could feel beginning to build in his throat, then looked quickly away.

"Shikamaru, the Prince was a distraction. I think even if she hasn't admitted it, she likes Ogano more than he knows." Ino whispered, turning her head to the side and closing her eyes as she lay on his shoulder. He breathed in sharply, and somehow managed to nod his head. She didn't even know what she was doing to him, did she? He closed his eyes, attempting to dream up a situation in which Ogano could tell Kana he loved her.

A situation where he, Shikamaru, could tell Ino he loved her.

* * *

_The Princess was to sacrifice herself for her country._

It was the next week that everything went wrong. Ino had reached the age of sixteen, the day after he did. At that age, a kunoichi had an entire new type of mission. Ones that made the old times of first kills and the stench of crimson and the gooey liquid being stuck under fingernails for days easy to forget. It was hard to forget that, of course, but it was even harder to forget the hands of enticed strangers roaming over skin that was covered barely ten minutes ago all for the sake of a country you had sworn loyalty to.

It was ok for those who would never receive those missions, Sakura with her protection because she was the apprentice of the Godaime herself and Hinata as the heir to Hyuga clan. They would never be able to understand, and nor could they ever try to. It would be an insult. But there was someone who could understand what Ino would go through if she took up any missions from then that required a completely different sort of skill to the usual sneaky killing and stealing, and that was Tenten. The bun-haired brunette was one year her senior, and with that one year came more missions than Ino ever wanted to accept. Not even for her country.

"_You need not do this, Kana!" Ogano yelled, tears crawling down his cheeks._

"I don't have a choice, Shikamaru." Ino whispered to him as she scribbled in the notebook, her writing becoming even more of a messier scrawl than his had been through the entire thing. He chewed on his lip before grabbing her hand. She had begun to tear holes into the page with the biro where she had been writing. It was only then that she burst into tears, from a mix of so many emotions. Frustration, anger, hurt, everything building up inside her since she had known what her next birthday meant. When you were in the academy at a young, tender age they never told you that you never had to be willing to sacrifice your body. All they mentioned was flower arranging, and other useless things that frittered away time. They were told women rarely trained to become ninja, but never told the reason why. Of course, she had known for years now, but it didn't stop it from disgusting her.

"I know. Don't worry, it'll be ok." He replied, holding her close as she fell into his chest sobbing. He stroked her soft blonde hair. In a matter of days, another man could be stroking her hair instead. She wouldn't be able to tell him no. She wouldn't even be able to tell him no if he cut her skin so much that her arms looked as though they had been painted in red ink, or if so many bruises covered her back that it became a collage of black and blue. But what could he say to her? He could lie; tell her that it'd be ok, that she didn't need to worry. He was worrying for her though, knowing that it wasn't ok, knowing that those who were enticed by the women sent out from their village were usually the worst type of men. She knew it, too. She had seen Tenten come back from those sort of missions with so many injuries she had looked worse than when Team Gai came back from fighting the Akatsuki when they had gone to save Gaara. She even knew that Anko still had scars from ten years before on her back, where she had been caught. Of course she had killed the man who done it to her, but what did that achieve? The marks were still there.

"Please don't lie to me. Please. You know it won't be." Ino breathed between chokes and sobs. He curved his hand under her hair to the nape of her neck, and stroked it softly. He moved his other hand under her chin, tilting it up quickly to look directly into her watering eyes. She sat transfixed, the biro dropping from her hand unto his bedroom floor. Moving away from where he had been leaning on his bed, he whispered in her ear softly.

"_Without the union of Lord Takumi and I, there will be no peace." _

"I'm not lying. I won't let them have you." He muttered, before taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. She stared at him, her flow of tears lessening but her confusion evident. He was well known for his plans, his brilliantly insane logical strategies, but she doubted that would help the situation at hand. Before she could protest he was pulling her downstairs and out of the door, and although she whined when they reached her house he ignored her protests that he couldn't do anything. He shoved the notebook into her hands before racing off, with only a mumbled apology for leaving her at that time. Normally, she would have wanted to punch him for leaving her when she needed him.

When she found out a week from Tsunade that he had sworn to accept any mission she wished on the condition that Ino was not assigned any missions that involved the exact things she had been terrified of carrying out she cried. Cried because she was so utterly useless, pathetic and unable to protect herself. Unable to ever understand what Tenten went through, and how hurt the older girl was when she heard she would be getting many of the type of mission Ino hadn't wanted at all given to her in place of said blonde. Guilt had Ino unable to contain herself for months, ashamed of herself.

"_I will not allow this union. If need be, I will die in order to prevent it."_

Their notebook had become filled with a dramatic story, for certain. But although Chouji told Ino to get it published, they would not. It still remained unfinished, and although it was a 'fantasy action-packed drama romantic epic' as Chouji put it, the type of book that sold extraordinarily well in the book market, they both felt (although they never told each other) that there was something wrong with it being a drama.

Their lives were often far more dramatic.

* * *

"_Ogano, do not leave me for I love you!" Kana screamed._

"Do you not find an ending like this morbid?" Shikamaru muttered, watching Ino as she wrote. A small smile graced her features, and the pen stopped. It hovered just above the paper as she moved to look at him, her blue eyes twinkling in amusement.

"Yes, but the tragedy of it is beautiful. Confessing love on a deathbed, it's something you never want to do. But in this story, it just fits. They hid their true feelings from one another all along, afraid of what the other felt. But their perfect love is confessed too late, leaving the reader in a state of upset." Ino beamed, white teeth flashing in a blinding smile that reminded him of Lee and Gai. He smirked, and let out a short laugh. She looked offended, and glared at him quickly. He waved his hand to signify his apologies.

"Yes, that's all a very good storyline. But perfect love? What is it, if there is any such thing?" His smirk was still present, and she did not look happy about it. She threw the pen at him spitefully before folding her arms in contempt. Men just did not understand these things. Would it kill them to be romantic? Huffing moodily, she stared at the paper in front of her. He was too smart for his own good, and he was right of course. She didn't know herself.

"There has to be such thing, of course. But what is it? You tell me." She replied, closing her eyes and leaning back into the grass of the empty forest. He shifted slightly where he was sitting, leaning on an old oak tree. He was thinking carefully for about five minutes, still deep in concentration as she opened her eyes and he began to answer.

"Perfect love is spending time together with someone you care about, doing things that seem stupid. It could be anything, even something stupid. Training, talking, writing. Anything, as long as you're with them. As long as you know they are safe. Even if they don't know you love them, it's always there. That feeling, that little rush of heart and sensational feeling. Perfect love is-" Shikamaru was cut off before he could continue his little speech on what perfect love was to him.

_Even though a sword had cut deeply__ into his side, he managed to lean forward and kiss her._

A pair of soft, pink lips were pressed against his. Tongues danced passionately as he deepened the kiss, his hands roaming to her soft blonde hair that was tickling his cheeks. Her hands pressed against his flax vest, holding him close. Wanting him never to leave, needing him by her to know that he was safe as her heart rushed sensationally.

"Don't worry. I figured out the answer." Ino whispered as she broke away, and he smirked. She had finally realised. Either that, or she had been planning this all along. The dramatic romantic writing, the characters that were clearly based on all those whom they knew and even the way she had leaned on him as he wrote to make him blush so that he was scarlet.

"_I love you too, Kana." Ogano whispered with his last breath._

He kissed her again, until both of their lips were red raw and chapped. She breathed heavily as he pulled away, and then smirked. He froze. Had he done something wrong? The answer was clearly a yes, seeing as she slapped him lightly around the head before he had the chance to ask her. She giggled on seeing his confused expression.

"Even something stupid? Writing? I'll remember that." She laughed, and he growled before kissing her again. A squeak of shock was her own reply before they succumbed to their animalistic desires once more. To think it had all started with some writing, more specifically an odd line of punctuation she had dotted across a page.

_Dot. Dash. Dot. Dot. Dot._

* * *

Probably not the dash meant in the theme, but hey. It is an update, which the likes of have not been seen for a bit over three weeks. I do not really like this one, but I liked the meanings I used. If you go and check the meanings of the names of the characters Shikamaru and Ino used in their story which I did not mention on google, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Reviews are loved. :)


	10. The Hidden

Summary: _They didn't need masks._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: This one was hugely inspired by _Carnival_, a look at the character of Temari by **sharingank** and the song _Carry You Home _by James Blunt. If you get the chance to read the first, and listen to the second I suggest you do it, because they are both wonderful. I was never really into James Blunt, but I heard this song about a month ago and it still just strikes me as beautiful. Even though lately I have been listening to it over and over again.

Now, **Theme Ten: #10.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Hidden_**

* * *

**One.**

_Porcelain__ numbers one and two._

It was easy to hide behind an ANBU mask.

Ino knew just how easy. Although she was surprised when she made the cut at the age of just sixteen, she supposed it had all been down to Ibiki putting in a good word for her. She wasn't the strongest kunoichi, although she was fairly fast and the best among their age group at gathering information though interrogation and spying due to her mind techniques. For that reason she was never expecting to be shoved on the front line, left to accept that her line of duty extended to places outside a dank prison cell where she drove others insane.

Shikamaru, on the other hand, found it harder than anyone else. Unlike Ino, he found it hard to disguise himself, to pretend to be something he wasn't. He had only applied for a promotion to ANBU rank when the opportunity arose because Chouji (and Ino, precious, gorgeous, untouchable Ino) had applied for it, and he didn't want his friend (or Ino, the one who was also his friend but also something he never could quite explain) coming back without him. If it was necessary, he would protect him (them) and make sure he (they) were never hurt. He'd promised once that he would make sure all of his missions went perfectly, and even if being in ANBU could change that he didn't care. As long as he knew that Chouji (and Ino) would not be hurt, because he would be there to make sure that no harm ever came to him (or her), not on his watch. He wouldn't allow it. Putting Chouji (and Ino) in danger would be unforgivable.

But even after the tattoo ink had been permanently carved into their arms, their uniforms were received in just the right sizes and they had signed their names in the book of all those who had achieved the rank that Tsunade kept well protected and hidden at all times, Ino didn't cry until she and Shikamaru received her ANBU masks. Not because she was emotional about seeing the porcelain item in her hand, but seeing it in the hand of Shikamaru. She hadn't said so, and the elders had tutted at her display of emotion. Tsunade had remained silent, watching her newest group of elites with satisfaction. They were the strongest group she had seen in a long time take up their positions. However, they were also the youngest. If any of them died, she'd only have herself to blame.

After the ceremony in the Hokage's office, Ino had wandered over to Shikamaru. Their eyes had met silently, and she frowned deeply. He wasn't supposed to have known she went for it. If Chouji had told him (like she had insisted he shouldn't) he was going to pay for it. Ibiki was the only one who would have mentioned it otherwise, and he rarely spoke to the man in front of her. Planners and torturers had no need to, really. Not that it mattered, she was more bothered that he hadn't told her he was going for this promotion.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I could ask the same."

They had received their first masks in a line of many, porcelains number one and two for their ANBU level missions they would be receiving. They should have been proud to receive them at such a young age. They shouldn't have been sad. They shouldn't have regretted going for it.

But they did.

* * *

**Two.**

_Porcelain numbers one and two._

They were cracked.

The masks they both hid behind, porcelain and made for their missions and the second to best thing they had to hide their emotions, the first being a black hole for a heart. But they were tarnished, in need of being fixed, useless and ugly and _cracked_. Just like some of the older masks that remained unbroken on the faces of their companions. Their silent, strong companions with no names and no faces and nothing. Their companions with porcelain for their facial features, unmoved and unchangeable as the day they were first given them. It was ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Ino hated ugly things.

She hated ugly things like those masks with their slit eyes and blank expressions no matter how well she wore them, but the even uglier sight of seeing Shikamaru surrounded by white was what she hated the most. White sheets, white bandages, white ceiling and floors and blankets and masks. She hated them all so much it hurt. She hated the whiteness of the hospital, even more the way it was supposed to be clean and white rather than it being that way by mistake. ANBU masks were never made to be white. They always ended up stained red, a less ugly crimson than the shades drawn on their masks in paint.

Her eyes flicked over Shikamaru, his eyes closed and his medium length brown hair resting on his shoulders in tangles. She looked at his pale skin, pale and unearthly and white. It scared her, that ugly colour. It scared her more than anything on him. It scared her more than death, more than pain, more than torture and hurt. She hated seeing him like that. Rummaging around in her small black bag, she found a hairbrush and some makeup so she could set to work. She brushed his hair as he slept, combing it out and making sure that it was kempt. Then although she knew he hated makeup, that sometimes it gave him bad skin, that it was one of the things in her possession he detested the most she began to cover him in foundation. Tanned, healthy coloured foundation. Anything was better than white.

Looking at the masks in her bag that she had learnt to keep by her side, just in case they were called up quickly for an urgent mission she felt it didn't make any difference. But she saw the cracks in the masks, the flaws; the ugly lies and the ugly hated whiteness and she pulled them out and began to pick at the cracks. Began to try to break them, pull at them and tear them apart. She kept the pieces, and when Tsunade asked her what had happened to them she had lied although it got her into such deep trouble. She'd smiled, pearly white teeth bore in am undetectable lie of a grin as she told her the answer.

"Nothing."

* * *

**Three.**

_Inoichi.__ Porcelain number three._

He was buried without his mask.

In the old days, as he had always told her, he had disliked being on the ANBU team. To make the cut he had done terrible things, most of them to the favour of the torture and interrogation department that he despised so much. He'd hated it when he found out she had been working there, and she'd had to explain it wasn't the same anymore. She could tear others apart, just as he had, but she'd leave them alive once she had the information. She'd make sure they weren't made even more broken, make sure they weren't hurt any more than was necessary in order for her to get what she wanted. She always got what she wanted. Always. Regardless of the times she didn't, they were to be ignored unless you wanted a rather colourful vocabulary thrown at you and a few new bruises for your troubles.

So she did him a favour, really. Rather than burying her father with something he hated, she had taken the damned ugly thing and smashed it into pieces. She'd heard Shikamaru and Chouji had done the same to the masks of their fathers from Naruto, before she told him what she'd done. She didn't bother asking why they had done it. It could be for the same reason, or it could be for a completely different one. Either way, she wasn't sure she wanted to know. So she never asked. Not even when the coffins of their fathers were lowered into the holes, not even when they were covered with dirt and not even when they finally went to visit their graves months after their burials.

One day, they could have a similar funeral. Ino knew it, although she never said it. But she also knew her father had never wanted her to be a girl, because it was easier that way, because it prevented Team InoShikaChou from being just Team InoShika or Team InoChou. She wasn't allowed to fall in love with either of them. They had to continue the tradition to a third generation of their team, a third generation of unparalleled teamwork. A third generation of their families, united as one with nothing to stop them. Not even the world. Together, they were perfect. They were untouchable. They were strong. They were ready to face whatever was thrown at them, whatever it was.

Even masks.

* * *

**Four.**

_Flesh one, facial expressions._

Now it was up to Shikamaru to replace them.

Ino was changing into something he didn't recognise. Her ANBU mask had not been replaced in the month since she lost it, and Tsunade said it was to teach her a lesson. From what he could guess, it was not a lesson Tsunade had wanted to teach but more a one the elders of the village had forced her to. But even so, it had done whatever it was supposed to do, of that he was sure. They had frowned upon her for crying for him; shedding tears he would have been shamed in doing. This lesson, for that reason, he felt was one to teach her to hide her emotions like a true shinobi. Either that, or hide them completely like they were told to. Like it was intended for them to know how to do. Like they were tools, tools for the use of the elders and Tsunade couldn't do a damn thing about it. Like she couldn't do a damn thing about Ino.

If it was a lesson, Ino had learnt it. Her smile became thin in a week, almost nonexistent on the day their fathers died in their last mission before their retirement and in the last few days it had not surfaced at all. Her tears had been for him on the day they received their masks, but for her father her eyes remained dry. Her caring fake sneer of disapproval was even something he missed upon not seeing it when Chouji ate too much, or he yawned during the time she was talking about something important. Not that she talked that much anymore, either. Ino was changing, changing and becoming odd. Loud became quiet, and quiet became speechless. Confidence became average, average became nothing. She was changing, and he didn't like it in the slightest. Not one bit. So then he said it.

"If you're not going to smile, I'll smile for you."

"Go ahead."

He had almost cried on hearing her words, but he didn't. He never cried. Not since he had cried for Asuma, taken his cigarettes and let the tears roll down his cheeks as he let his lungs go black. The cigarettes began to show his sorrow simply by being lit, instead of tears crawling down his cheeks and upsetting Ino. They'd always joked cancer would kill Asuma, but they had been wrong. Cancer was an ugly thing, but when it was figurative and was actually just a word for an illness it was not their teacher it claimed. The illness of being a shinobi caught up with all of them in the end, a few years later or ten or twenty years in the future even. It didn't matter if they told themselves it wouldn't. It always did. Kakashi was his prime example of this unstated fact he knew, although Tsunade was a better one. In their generation, however, he never thought that it would be her. The loud, beautiful girl on his team.

He began to replace her smiles with his.

* * *

**Five.**

_Ino. __Emotional one, insanity._

For a short time, he almost thought she was back to normal.

Back to being Ino, the Ino everyone had known. She still hadn't got her mask, and it was only a week from when he thought she had snapped and stopped showing her emotions but he didn't want to think about it logically. She was ok, she was back to being a Yamanaka, back to being Ino, back to being his Ino. Loving, caring, emotional Ino who always tried to get the best for her boys. Because really, both of them were hers. She did whatever she could to protect them, regardless of what it was.

Then it happened. She was late for training, which she never was. Chouji was meeting his father afterwards for some reason or the other, and so he had with a worried expression agreed to let Shikamaru go to her house alone. He wished he hadn't. He had found Ino in her room, staring down at the wooden floor. To be more precise, the white porcelain chunks scattered across the wooden floor, dressed in her pyjamas and clutching a sword tightly in one hand. The one that she'd had forever, just like the one he had. But the one she never used. Her eyes were wide, her skin as pale as paper and all of a sudden he knew that she was sick but he just couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

"Ino, what have you done?"

She stared at him, a small smile on her face appearing suddenly. He stared as she began to giggle, unaware of how stupid she felt the question was. That little sort-of honorary title of 'genius' he had clearly was one he didn't deserve. What had she done? She'd killed innocent people for the sake of her country which constantly needed more funding. She'd forgotten how to manage a real smile; instead of the thin-lipped ones she always had now like the one she'd just given him. She'd begun to smash the masks they had all hidden behind, even her fathers, even the ones she had been given with a reason, and even the ones she had always known she had needed. To make it even worse, it was almost too easy to smash the things she wore so easily. The masks made of porcelain, pale and white and red and ugly. Ugly like she was becoming, strange and restrained and ugly.

"Everything. Everything ugly, stupid and wrong."

Of all the people he'd expected to crack first, Ino was not one of them. Ino was too different. Too loud, too beautiful and too wonderful and too perfect. Smart enough to know that their masks were there for a reason, and that they were needed. Well, the porcelain ANBU regulation ones they had been given, at least. He'd always expected it to be Chouji, far too kind for the job. Or Sakura, because Sasuke wasn't going to come back no matter how many times both she and Naruto tried to bring him back to the place that was once his home. Or Naruto, for seeing everything fall apart around him. Hinata even, because she was so caught up in clan issues that she rarely took time to take care of herself anymore. But Ino? Never Ino. Not her. Anyone but her. She wore masks too well, found them easy to hide behind. He always found them hard to hide behind, harder than anyone else had found it. But from then on, the difficulty of it didn't matter. Sometimes, it was better to wear masks and lie.

Just to pretend that everything was fine.

* * *

**Six.**

_Porcelain number four._

It was when she got a new mask.

A few days after the incident with the smashed masks, she received her new ANBU mask. But unlike every other one he had ever seen, it didn't have red painted on it. No even one square, one brush stroke or a single dot. The mask she had received was plain white. She never said it, but he felt somehow that she hated it more than she had hated all the rest of them combined. It was plain, stark, just white, unseeing, faceless, lifeless and ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly and inhuman and he didn't just feel she hated it. When she looked at it, he knew it. Because although it was a mix of a scared, fearing look the most prominent emotion he could see present on her face was hate. She hated it, but he didn't understand why. She never told him, never asked him to listen to what she had to say about it, probably never wanted him to know. He wasn't so sure he wanted to know, either.

But he knew he hated it when he saw her slide it unto her face to make sure that it would stay in place when she was doing her job. He liked that it still hid her, kept her safe from most harm so that she wouldn't be identified and that the Godaime had probably meant for the best because it was clear Ino disliked the normal ANBU masks with red painted on them. But it had not worked. It would probably end up in more pieces than the last ones. But even so, at least she had a mask again. She seemed relieved about it, and gradually she began to seem a little less odd than she had been acting for so long. Eventually, it seemed like everything was back to normal.

Normality for them was Shikamaru being lazy, but good-natured and heard working, caring more about Ino than he ever really let on and treating Chouji like a brother. Normality was Ino being loud, boisterous and bossy but being that way because she loved her friends dearly and wanted the best for them. Normality was Chouji being kind and caring, more than any shinobi should be and eating enough to die from a heart attack rather than in a fight.

Normality was something hard to cling to, though. Although Ino didn't change back to her quieter, scary self they had seen it slipped from their grasps just as quickly as it had then and Shikamaru found that he could only blame himself for it. He couldn't help it, really. She was talking again, eh could hear her clear melodious voice and her tinkling laughter. He could see she was healthy again; smiling the smile that drew everyone in and making everything around her seem more radiant with her beauty. Even when she wore the mask and killed men and women in front of him and it bothered him more than usual, it began to only be because he was afraid they would hurt her or she'd hurt herself doing it. Even though he'd seen her masks, he was falling for her. He knew it, too. He couldn't help it. He couldn't stop himself. It was too easy to love Ino.

Far too easy.

* * *

**Seven.**

_Emotional two, Team Seven._

"I waited for you, Sasuke."

She said it so easily, so acceptingly that he almost heard his heart shatter into a thousand pieces like the masks she smashed so seemingly easily. Shikamaru's stomach began to churn, waves of nausea breaking and wombing inside him. After all this time, he'd though she'd gotten over it. It was just a rivalry, a childhood crush, it was nothing.

Sasuke looked at the blank mask in her hand, white and pale and beautiful and shining in the dim moonlight as he hung off Naruto's back, barely alive and clearly mustering all the strength and willpower he could just to open an eye and look at it. His smirk came to life on his lips, cruel and cold and Shikamaru hated it. He hated that he was looking at the mask like that, with his bloodshot eyes and seeming to find something amusing.

"I didn't want you to. Just like that mask, you're blank."

She stared at him a moment, confusion all over her stunning face. Naruto stopped and stared at her, wondering what Sasuke found so funny. It must have been hurting him, but he was managing a rasping chuckle despite the fact blood was coming from his mouth in a steady crimson flow like a river. He hadn't been speaking much, just as he had been advised, barely clinging to life with his dirtied and chipped fingernails by not wasting his energy. Sakura would have complained, but she had already been draped over someone else over an hour ago and carried back home like a helpless young child. It was his fault too, not that it seemed to bother him. He never did have much concern for other people.

"Beautiful, deadly, but nothing."

Shikamaru didn't even think before he lunged at the Uchiha, ready to choke him. Ino immediately jumped in front of him, protecting him. Shielding him from Shikamaru. Her eyes were defiant as she looked at him, but underneath them he could see her hurt. She'd never show it though, not if it killed her. Her lips were in a crooked smile as he stood, still tense, but not ready to harm the man with hair the colour of ugly spitting crows again. She stared intently at Shikamaru, saying the words for the both of them.

"It's about time I let you go."

She meant it.

* * *

**Eight.**

_Chouji. Porcelain number five._

The boar, the deer and the butterfly.

It'd been perfect. Unparalleled, unrivalled, flawless, daresay even perfect. They had been untouchable, really. That had been what they'd thought. They were young, though, so very young and so very foolish. Death was something that just happened, it had never really occurred to any of them it was an actual event. Even when Asuma died, it was just something that happened. When her father died, it was just something that happened. They moved on.

She'd always thought that Chouji would die from a heart attack, or some other health related problem. She looked to the Akimichi medical records for these problems, overlooking combat issues and other things like the pills that could get them in trouble. It was easy to overlook those things when you thought death wasn't something that could happen to something perfect like InoShikaChou. Far too easy, but a stupid mistake nonetheless on her part. Yes, she'd overlooked something so stupid. Pills, pills, ugly green and yellow and red pills that she hated even more than the ANBU masks after finding out about them when they were twelve after that pointless retrieval mission.

Green, red and yellow. The last stupid, insignificant, unneeded things he'd told them was that red was the colour for the butterfly. He'd always liked blue better, but it suited Ino too well and he'd always worn a bit of red. It was the colour of anger, rage, hurt, the things he contained and refused to let cloud his judgement and kept him in constant knowledge of the fact that they were things that could upset others so he should not let them out because they caused painful things. Yellow was Ino's colour, less dangerous than the red, reminding him of her pale cornflower hair and sunny features that were so beautiful although she never really seemed to realise it like she had a few years ago. He'd told her she needed to show it off again, share it with the world like she always had to which she'd laughed although she was crying. Green was the least dangerous, but it was the colour that suited Shikamaru. The colour of the grass he lounged in, devising clever strategies. But then again, it was cunning. It suited the deer well for camouflage, and so hid the fact that it could also be the most dangerous of the three as it was the first one to give a surge of power and so a need to continue using the rest of the dangerous pills if it failed. It'd been stupid, so, so, stupid but they'd listened as they cried and Ino smiled for him brighter than she'd ever smiled for anyone ever before, her grin stretching from ear to ear although it was fairly forced.

They both smashed his mask. The memories were repulsive that came from it. The memories were ones of killings, rage and anger and hurt like Chouji hadn't wanted. They were ugly and disgusting, the least beautiful things they had ever seen and they didn't suit their friend. Things like that needed to be destroyed without any second thoughts.

They were too painful.

* * *

**Nine.**

_Words._

"I love you."

Ino had always hidden behind her words, just like another mask, but Shikamaru never had. She'd said hurtful things to Sakura in retaliation to things said to her years before, not really being able to say what she wanted to until they had beaten each other to a bloody pulp. Hand in hand with hiding behind her words was lying, which was easy to her sometimes. Too easy. Sometimes, lies were necessary and he should have known she was bad with truth still, just as she'd always been just from the simple fact she looked shocked.

"Liar, you don't. I don't love you, either."

She almost spat it out, as if the words left a horrible aftertaste in her mouth. He smiled. He should have known she'd say that, she'd always been like that. Stubborn, insecure, too afraid to be hurt even if she would never really show it. She glared at his smile hatefully, but he didn't care. She was never good at lying to him; no matter how good she was at lying to every other person she'd ever met. Even if she didn't know it, he could always see right through her.

"You're the liar here."

"Really?"

That was when he kissed her.

* * *

**Ten.**

_Nothing._

Together, they did it.

They find each and every mask she smashed, or rather the pieces of them, the masks they still had, wrote down the feelings of every emotional mask and flesh masks and everything down to all the words they'd hidden behind. Then they went out, bought some matches and went to the forest his family owned to strip the wood from trees. The built a bonfire, piling it up as high as they could manage. They threw their masks unto it; the ten masks of Shikamaru and Ino, and Ino held Shikamaru's hand as he threw the match unto the pile and immediately hit some of the small amount of gunpowder underneath it. Sparks flew up, the wind blowing them and creating a savage fire that enveloped the entire thing until the only parts left of it when it finally died down were some fine ashes that blew away without any cares. They could look out for each other. They loved each other enough to. That love was all they needed.

They didn't need masks.

* * *

The masks thing is probably very overused by now, but I wanted to do a fresh take on it as after the above mentioned. I also am now a third of the way through! I need to celebrate somehow,

Reviews are loved. :)


	11. The Flower

Summary: _Flowers really could be beautiful._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I do not like the way I have portrayed Ino in this in the slightest, as I hate it when people portray her like this. But I really could not think of any other idea I liked in particular to go with this theme, so I am hoping that all of the readers of this can forgive me.

Now, **Theme Eleven: Gardenia.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Flower_**

* * *

Shikamaru had always hoped he'd be different.

The teasing kisses she blew at him, which he ignored her also blowing at Chouji and sometimes even Asuma jokingly. He'd never given her anything to express his feelings, not even a few words. Not chocolates, because she was always on a diet and nothing he said or did would ever change that. Not a bunch of flowers or even one flower, because her family owned a flower shop so it would be stupid. Plus, she was just as pretty and delicate as a flower. Things like that could never compare. But still, he'd foolishly ignored her fake flirting of what he had wanted to believe were their secrets. Their small shared smiles, her cheeky winks and the fact that for some time he'd always been the one to hold her after she used the mind entering techniques her family was known for.

But the teasing kisses had stopped long ago when they reached the age of fifteen for him, although Chouji still occasionally had them sent in his direction. The saucy mock winks ceased, and she refused to let anyone catch her anymore. She'd claimed she didn't need anyone else to catch her when she fell, although he felt it was because she just didn't want anyone touching her because she'd had enough men on missions trying to grab her thinking she was just some dumb blonde, pretty girl. Even the smiles they had given one another stopped, with no explanation as to why. But still, he'd hoped. He'd hoped and wished and dreamed like a hopeless fool. It had been to no avail, of course.

He thought maybe, he knew why. On one mission, it had gone too far. She'd offered herself as bait, so they could lure some ignorant rich fool into a trap where Shikamaru could easily remove him as they had been instructed to do. It had worked perfectly. Since she had learnt a small amount from Anko on various missions, she had known what to do exactly. How to lick her lips in just the right way, how to make herself seem cautious or feisty depending on what was needed. She was perfect at it. When she done her job alone, that was. He and Chouji had come in too late, and she'd nearly been forced. They'd let her slit his throat, but that had been when it started. When Tsunade found out, Ino had been sent on more and more missions of the sort and somewhere along the way he was pretty sure she'd lost the promises she'd made to herself about those sort of missions, and everything had gone awfully wrong. But she never said anything about it. Not a single word, not even once.

It was when Kiba gave her a flower; however, that he finally felt something was wrong. A hyacinth. She'd once told him that they meant games or sport. The way they looked at each other made him feel slightly sick. That passionate look they directed at one another regardless of the fact people were staring at them. Then to make things worse, Kiba had roped an arm around her stomach and leant in. His stomach churned as he saw him kiss her, a small grin of victory on his face when he moved away to breathe. But as soon as he had disappeared, the flower was handed to a random girl in the street and she was the one with the smirk of glory splashed across her face. Without even thinking about it, he'd run and grabbed her arm. Pulling her down an alley, he was shocked at her lack of alarm at the scandalised stares.

"What do you think you're doing?" He hissed, looking down at her pretty unalarmed face with such rage he felt like he could throttle her. She stared up at him with such innocent wide blue eyes he felt tears prick in the corners of his eyes, despite the fact that he so badly wanted to hate her at that moment. He wanted to hate her more than anything, but he couldn't. It wasn't as easy as he wanted it to be.

"Well, if he wants me, then getting a recommendation for jounin." She replied quietly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He felt the painful retorts growing in his throat, things that he wanted to yell to the world about what she was doing, what she was becoming, what she was. Instead, he had turned away. He hadn't said any of them, but he wished he had. It was one of his biggest regrets not doing so afterwards, and knowing that there were so many things that went unsaid between them.

Through the next few weeks after that he saw her with so many different people it began to get to him. She could have just asked him to recommend her, but she didn't. Instead, she was going around everyone from Kiba to (the last person he saw her with) Ibiki. Ibiki, of all people, a sadistic nutcase who could do so much harm she didn't quite seem to understand. She didn't know who she was playing with, getting into something like that. He was pretty sure Ibiki knew the stunt she was pulling, laughing at all his stupid jokes as she ran down the street after him without any reason, smiling at him in a way he must have known Anko had taught her. But he didn't seem to care, playing along with her game.

But Shikamaru still couldn't give up.

* * *

"Don't touch me!"

She screamed it, her voice deafeningly loud. Shikamaru backed away from Ino, seeing the hurt and fury brimming in her eyes ready to be let out with violent gestures. But the punches she could have thrown never connected with his chest, let alone her stinging slaps hitting his face. Instead, she turned her back on him and sat on the ground. She didn't want to look at him, meet his eyes. He'd known she hated people touching her bare skin, but he couldn't help it. He'd had to catch her; it would have felt strange if he hadn't in training. But now she was upset, and he knew it. Small sniveling noises were coming from her, and she was beginning to curl up. Her head hit her knees in defeat, and she waved him away with one hand. She didn't want him there. Not then, and soon it would be not ever. He could just feel it.

But he didn't care. If he could have this time with her, these small, precious moments then it was fine. As long as he still had some time with her, some seconds before he had to say goodbye for good that he could cling to and remember. But even then, that might not happen. If he could comfort her right then, the vain dream that it would all be fine soon could still live. He sat next to her, not putting his arm around her. She'd thrown a fit this large over him catching her and touching her bare skin, he didn't want to think what would happen if he did something like that. She'd probably have some sort of mental breakdown like the big drama queen she could be, knowing her. The old her, anyway. He lifted a hand to place on her back, but she flinched when she saw it through teary eyes. He sighed, dropping it to the floor immediately. They would make it right, but clearly not it he touched her.

"Why don't you want me to touch you?" He whispered in a cracking voice through sore lips, his mind heavy with dark thoughts. She visibly stiffened once she heard his words, her back arching at a sharp angle as she tried to hide in herself even more. She sobbed, unable to answer his question. His voice rose.

"Why, Ino? Why?" He was speaking loudly, and she was beginning to shake so badly it was like she was having a fit. Her arms curled around her body defensively, as if she were protecting herself from him and his words. He let out a choked laugh upon seeing it, venom in his eyes as he jumped to his feet and stared down at her.

"Why? Why don't you want me to touch you? Why won't you tell me?" He shouted his questions repetitively as she wiped her eyes fiercely, trying to remove the steadily recreating flow of tears. Her arms flew back out of their protective gesture, her body uncurled as she forced herself to her feet. He finally managed to stop shouting on seeing her face, her electrifying eyes concentrating on him. She was still shaking, tears still rolling down her cheeks and if she was going to say something that would hurt him it would crush him into pieces, he could tell. If she was going to say something cruel, she could at least say it looking strong and untouchable like she used to. Not looking so small and vulnerable like she did then. Exactly when had she gotten so thin, and when had he gotten so much taller than her? It felt so wrong. Everything felt so wrong, so disgusting and wrong.

"Because Shikamaru, I don't want you to be like all the rest of them." She said finally, her voice defiant and angry. It sounded almost thunderous, but that must just have been it echoing in his head. She looked too frail, too little and dare he say weak. That look didn't suit her at all. Ino was the loud one, the bright, bubbly one, the girl who always had curves in all the right places and the one who always looked too beautiful, too perfect to be human. But there she stood, looking so different right in front of him and saying words that made her sound so different to what she'd always been. The differences, those stupid disgusting changes he'd failed to see the whole time.

So although she'd just almost indirectly told him she probably wasn't in the entirely right mental state with her answer, that she wasn't as innocent as she looked and that she used every man he'd seen her with in all the wrong ways he didn't care. Because he knew. He knew that she didn't want him touching her skin like all the rest of them had wanted to, or most likely had. Ino always got what she wanted, no matter what it took. She never really thought about self-sacrifice. She always needed to protect others, and to protect others she'd needed to be stronger. But sometime, maybe even right then, she needed to hand that duty over to him. She needed to stop hurting herself like that, because what had happened was the result. He'd only wanted to catch her, and she didn't want him to. She didn't want his eyes raking over her, removing her clothes in a glance and touching her bare skin. She didn't want him to be like everyone else. She just wanted him to be Shikamaru. Biting his lips and forcing back the stinging tears, he extended his hand to the open space between them.

"Just take my hand." He said, his voice low and calm like it had been when they were twelve and he'd reassured her that it was ok. That whenever she used her technique, he'd catch her if she wanted him to. She smiled at him softly, the first real smile he'd seen from her in a long time before extending her hand and placing it on top of his. Their fingers curled together in unison, the broken moments between them forgotten almost instantly. He wanted to help her, and she felt that was ok. Because it was Shikamaru, and he understood her better than Sakura, Chouji or anyone ever had and she didn't need to lie to him. With him, it would be ok. As long as she had him, as long as she could hold his hand and cling to him. She could hold him without touch, and he could bind her to him without chains. It was just like that. It was time for a new start, a new beginning where everything was fixed again and all the painful memories were forgotten in an instant.

Shikamaru's hope that he would always be different sprung to life once more with a renewed freshness like that of spring. The sun was beginning to peek out from behind the clouds and banish their lingering darkness, and the distant smell of cooking ramen was drifting in the air as Ichiraku began to open shop for yet another day. It was a new day. A new day which had brought everything back to life, and spring was a new start. A new beginning. A new beginning for both of them and for both of them not just the hopes of Shikamaru when she took his hand without complaint or some sort of terrible reasoning. On that day, she picked a white violet and handed it to him. She grinned, with a few words for some sort of makeshift explanation that she didn't really need to give him.

"Let's take a chance on happiness." She breathed, happiness being just the way they were again. No lies from her, no dark secrets that lingered in her bed. So with that, on that night they went to her lonely apartment and took out the mattress. The next morning in the field, the burnt cinders were the only sign they had been there at all the previous day. That, and the lingering feeling of happiness between them.

She began to hope, too.

* * *

"You shouldn't have done it."

Shikamaru's words hung heavy in the humid summer air that had been trapped in the room by the closed window, and for once Ino wished that he hadn't said anything. She'd rather have nothing echo in the silence than those words, those words that were so true but so disgustingly ugly she wanted them to be nonexistent. But they weren't, they were real, and he'd said them and it was the truth and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't turn back time and stop herself, curiosity had always gotten the better of her and going back wouldn't change a thing because she knew she wouldn't listen to her nagging doubts even if she popped up in front of herself in her memory and told her that it was a stupid idea. But she was impulsive, she was brash, she rarely thought things through too well. That was what had landed her in the place she was then in the first place.

The hospital. She was used to seeing people in the supposedly serene and calming antiseptic ball of white paint, sheets, floor and everything else there was but now she knew why people complained about the supposed cleanliness of the pure white driving them insane. She'd only been in there three days, but she was already longing for colour. The vibrant colours of flowers, scorching reds and shocking pinks. Bright leaves filled with chlorophyll, and the softest of blues like the sky mixing with the palest of lilacs. She'd always preferred bright colours; she'd always loved them because she was so colourful herself. Loud and vibrant, like the largest sunflower you could find except always clad in blue or purple. She loved those colours so. But there she sat, cloaked in an oversized white shirt and feeling less colourful than she ever had. Even her skin was beginning to look too pale, ready to match the hospital pretty soon like she was some sort of chameleon. She hated it.

"I know." She managed to say, staring down at the multitude of bruises on her right arm. Dark mauves and deep blues tinted with pasty yellows. At least they were colourful, she thought bitterly. Her blood was too, or whoever's the blood had been before it was connected to her arm with a needle to pump it into her system. Disgusting thought, really, but thoughts weren't ever as disgusting as real life and she'd seen worse with her eyes than anything she could ever imagine. Plus, this was supposed to make her better. She couldn't really say anything bad about it until she had tried it.

"Ibiki, of all people. Why?" He asked, shifting on the edge of the bed where he sat to look directly at her. She had one glimpse of his piercing dark eyes before looking away, feeling somewhat ashamed. She hadn't expected him to understand, and she didn't want him to either. It was so easy to want to do something, to need to do it even. But to need someone was harder, and she needed him. He'd probably not understand it at all for that reason.

"Wasn't intentional." She muttered, staring at the closed blinds. Slits of light flitted through the small spaces between them, showing rare glimpses of the outside world when it wasn't shining in her eyes. It would probably be a bit longer before she was out there again, and it was her own fault although she wanted to spitefully complain to someone. It wouldn't be fair on them really, if she was responsible. She would have normally said something to Shikamaru because he knew how to deal with her moods, but he was snorting that very moment at her answer. Clearly, he didn't find her lie to be an acceptable excuse.

"It was." He said stiffly. Her eyes glided back to him, something telling her in the pit of her stomach that he didn't want to look at her. Just as she had thought, he had glanced away. He was staring at her arm, no, more specifically her hand. Her arm had needles in it pumping her full of different medications and the blood she apparently needed for some reason or other, clear liquids and liquid reds. But it was her hand. The thing that was becoming thinner as the three days passed, because she couldn't really eat that much. She'd wanted to be a few sizes smaller, always wanted to be thinner and for that reason there was rarely a time when she wasn't on a diet. But she never wanted to be this thin, and she could feel that it scared him somehow. He didn't like it. Her knuckles were sticking out a bit too much, looking painful underneath the tightly pulled skin that was barely connected over the joints. She didn't mind if he was scared. It scared her a little bit, too.

"I suppose. But I was so intrigued, so very intrigued. I wanted to find out what went on in his mind, knowing that my old strokes and smiles for him were nothing. If he really fell for it. If I managed to outsmart him that once, Shikamaru. I wanted to know what he thought about, if anything at all. I needed to know if I could break him, the top interrogator. From that however, I know it wouldn't be easy. But I'll do it one day, even if it means going back to that thing I was. I need to." She muttered rapidly, knowing that she sounded somewhat demented. She knew that she would never willingly go back to what had been with the lying and scheming and using her body to get promotions. But if she could capture him just enough to know whether or not she could break him, entice him just a tiny bit without going too far, she would do it. She had to. She just had to. Shikamaru nodded, chewing his lip slightly. He didn't seem to understand. But that was ok.

She slid her hand over his, and she caught him almost-flinch in the corner of her blue eyes. Her thin fingers curled around his, and he returned the gesture. His grip was weaker though, softer. Caring, protecting of her. Everything she wanted to be to him, and everything she knew that she could be one day. When she finally got over her small, ridiculous obsessions. She knew they were, no point in hiding that, but still. Eventually, she'd cure herself of this ridiculous obsession she had with him too. The dull aching in the bottom of her heart, crying out to tell him that she wanted him more than anything else. Even the information she so desired, even more than the want she had to be better than Ibiki. She wanted Shikamaru Nara, and she wanted to tell him she loved him. No, she needed to.

"Ino, I need to tell you something." He whispered. Her heart began to thump, the blood she actually had in her body felt like it was rushing through her and she couldn't do a thing about it. He couldn't, he just couldn't want to tell her the thing she wanted to hear him say. He opened his mouth again, but then something glimmered in his eyes. He was going to lie to her. He was going to lie, and she knew it.

"Tell me later, I want to sleep." She interrupted with her own hushed voice, laying back on the pillows and closing her eyes. He didn't protest, but she felt his fingers slip out of her hand gingerly. There were some rustling noises before he left, the door shutting quietly as he exited. Only then did she allow one of her eyelids to slip open, to check if the room was empty, to leave her alone with her thoughts once more. Instead, her eyes met with a vase on the empty bedside table that was filled with flowers.

Acacias, _concealed love_, amaryllis, _splendid beauty_, daffodils, _you're the only one_, orange blossoms, _purity_ and finally a sunflower. _Adoration. _The beautiful bouquet, so bright and colourful, almost hurt her eyes. The astounding array of colours, shining like a golden beacon in the dull white room she lay in. He knew her too well. So she whispered to the empty room, a joyous laugh at her own stupidity and his skill at hiding things.

"Me too, Shikamaru. Me too."

* * *

"Here."

Ino had only left the hospital that morning, but it didn't matter to her. She needed to do it, it was more important then anything else at that moment. She needed him to know, because if he didn't and something happened then she'd never forgive herself. Because if he didn't, they'd probably both end up dying old and lonely with no memories of being young and a beautiful pair together. They'd never have memories for Ibiki to tear apart if she tried to mess with him again, and without those she'd be nothing but a hollow shell. She wouldn't do it; she wanted to keep those memories. She wanted those memories of her and him, as happy as they could possibly be and she wanted to hold onto them forever. He took the flower in one hand, staring down at her with a look of bafflement.

"Gardenia. Purity, refinement, you're lovely, sweet love and one more. You know it, because you've been reading up on flowers from what I could gather from the bouquet." She said, smiling brightly. He smiled back as he looked down at it, the final flower passed between them. Although it still wasn't as beautiful a flower as he thought her to be, it was still one of the best things he had ever laid eyes on.

"Secret love." He stated, glad that she had recognised his effort for once. Before he could say a word about being sorry that he hid his feelings from her and sorry that she'd figured it out but not to worry because he could deal with it or something stupid like that of the millions of possibilities running through his mind it was too late. Pink lips connected with his own.

Flowers really could be beautiful.

* * *

Corny ending. So shoot me. There was originally a deeply angsty, slightly disturbing ending to this at some point during the hospital scene. But I was nice, and I did not make the entire thing disturbing although the portrayal of Ino at the beginning was. So I hope the readers of this can forgive my transgression on her character, still and I hope that they can forgive my almost complete unoriginality with flower meanings throughout most of this.

Reviews are loved. :)


	12. The Fragile

Summary: _He loved her. Oh, God, he_ _loved her._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Now, **Theme Twelve: In a good mood.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Fragile_**

* * *

She thought that she was strong.

But if Shikamaru spoke to Ino, she'd crumble. His words would crush her under their weight, making her feel smaller and smaller with each sound as they came from his mouth. Oh, she would end up broken. He would end up breaking her, without even realising it. He'd end up breaking her heart without knowing. She'd drown in him, unable to be set free. She always stood tall. She always smiled. She had since she was young. But it was going to happen, she knew from the very start.

The smallest compliment would make her grin when they were five. She had her father dote on her every day, treating her like a Princess, but other people rarely did despite his assurances that she was royalty in his eyes. But Shikamaru would make note of the things she liked. Flowers, clothes and other minor materialistic things, beautiful things. Things unlike him, smart but not very pretty at all. Even so, whenever she liked something, whenever she tried something like flower arranging he'd say how beautiful it looked. It worked when she was five, flattering her, and it still did when he visited the shop ten years later.

His laziness would make her laugh in secret when they were twelve. She'd nag him about it; she'd tell him he'd never get a girl. He said he didn't care, that _women were too troublesome anyway_. He had always been like that. Anything he found stressful, anything difficult he could easily deal with like nobody else could would be something he actually tried to avoid. He'd put energy into not doing something, but he'd not put in less energy into actually doing them. It made her giggle, in her silly, girly, twelve-year old way like girls always did with the boys they liked. But she didn't like him, no. She didn't. She liked Sasuke. Or rather, she wanted to. It was never about winning against Sakura. It was about not giving up. Admittance would be loss, and she never liked to lose. So no, she didn't like Shikamaru. Not in that way, anyway. _Honest, honest to God truth _she'd say to Sakura after Sasuke left, although her fingers were crossed behind her back and out the vision of her somewhat friend.

But then they became fifteen, strange and different and he'd changed. She'd changed. She had grown used to changes, used to the way things happened. Their lives were changed by the slightest things when they lived the way they did. Their lives were changed by small coincidences, small things that happened. Big impacts, a butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings created a hurricane, that was what it could be compared to. The smallest of actions could change everything, and nothing could be undone. Unwritten, like they were in a script, part of a story that could be changed. But they weren't, and his words were ugly. They weren't unreal, weren't fake. Weren't changeable. Weren't unwritten.

"I think I'm in love." He'd whispered, his words almost as silent as the almost empty field which the three of them lay in. Ino, Shikamaru, Chouji. InoShikaChou. Their team. The group they had grown as, the group they were and would probably just simply always be. But Ino had ruined that a long time ago, without even saying it. Shikamaru and Ino. They weren't meant to be. She never said it, they never knew, but she felt it. It would always be Shikamaru, Ino and Chouji. Never just two of them. They couldn't love each other. It would ruin everything. Absolutely everything. But Shikamaru ruined it all that day, regardless of her unknown thoughts and feelings. Regardless of everything she'd done to protect what they were. Regardless of what she believed. No, it wasn't fair, but very much ever was.

"With who?" Chouji said, so softly, so carefully. But even so, his words were like daggers. She could almost hear the air shatter beneath them. Ino breathed in sharply, then hurled herself to her feet before he could answer. Their eyes had automatically snapped to her, glued to her, stuck and followed her rigid movements and pink lips as they formed barely-there words.

"Sorry. This time, I can't." She dashed off in an instant, leaving them to watch her back and wonder what she couldn't do. She never told them what it was, exactly. But she felt that he knew. He'd always known, and never said anything. But she couldn't. She couldn't hear him say that he didn't love her. He'd said so many things, some of them beautiful, another large amount of them unknowingly hurtful, but that would be the one thing she couldn't listen to. It would be the thing to break her. Maybe she wasn't as strong as she thought he was. She had been more accurate than Tenten trying to hit a target. Far too accurate, inhumanly so even.

Because she'd known. She'd known all along that he'd end up breaking her.

She was sick of lying. Sick of smiling, and saying that it didn't matter. That she wouldn't ruin everything their team had worked for just over something trivial. No, it would be stupid. The most stupid thing she'd ever done, and it'd destroy everything. More than Shikamaru's words already had, anyway. It'd make sure that unlike with Shikamaru, things couldn't be repaired, and they couldn't even pretend to be fixed. It was hard to fix things when you weren't in a good mood, unable to even lift a finger to help yourself. Without the will to do so.

She'd known that from the start, too.

* * *

"Ino, what can't you do?"

He'd asked her it without any fear, any worry, free from pain or anything she felt. Free from knowing what she did. Free from the thing that bound her to him, although there were no chains or ribbons or anything to tie her to him. To hold her close to him, to keep her there no matter how many times she tried to break free, make a futile grab at a never-nearing freedom. He'd never get it, even if she told him. So she decided to play pretend once more, like she was young again, playing house and tea party and doll hospital. Things were so much easier when she was younger, she could cry all she wanted then. But not now. She wouldn't allow herself to do something like that.

"You tell me." She'd answered, grabbing for his pouch. He was startled, but did nothing. She took his cigarettes, lit one up without a second thought and balanced it between pink lips. Puffs of smoke surrounded them, clouded them, hid her in something familiar that reminded them both of Asuma, Asuma's smell. Something Shikamaru had started to acquire.

"You can't let go." He said, and it was then her eyes stung. The smoke was making her cough, and that became her excuse. Water stung harshly in the corners of her eyes, not falling but dripping so gently unto her cheeks it was like small droplets of water falling from a leaky tap. She wouldn't let herself cry. No, no, that was one thing she could never do. They'd only ever seen her cry once, for her almost-best friend, Sakura, but she couldn't cry for them. Not for those she loved most. Not for Shikamaru.

"Just let me down." She said, dropping the cigarette and crouching gently on the floor. She buried her head in her knees, mumbling excuses about feeling sick. Let go of what? She never had something to cling to, never had anything to begin with. He'd never been hers, never been something she could obtain or someone who could love her. But she couldn't let go. No, she just couldn't. She needed the words to set her free, the words telling her he loved someone else, although she couldn't hear them. She didn't want to.

"Who will catch you then?" Shikamaru asked, crouching down beside her. His arm extended ever so awkwardly, capturing her and pulling her into a warm hug. He did smell like Asuma, like cigarettes and rain. Like flowers she had given her teacher instead of sold to him, ready to be passed on to Kurenai before she could even joke with him about it. Like pregnancy from the woman without a father for her child any longer, now that their teacher was dead. Like green tea from the Sand village. Like medicine from the hospital. Like the Hyuga household, hopefully where he'd been around Neji briefly. Like rusted metal. God, she was losing it. She could smell everything in his vest, so many different scents. Kiba could do that though, couldn't he? He could probably smell it better then her. So shoving Shikamaru away, she had gone searching for Kiba. Shikamaru didn't understand. She never wanted to be caught. She wanted to let go with knowledge, through knowing. That would be her release.

"What can you smell?" She'd asked, without even saying on who or what. She grasped his arm tightly, a pleading grip of desperation. She was scared. She was petrified. But still, she needed to know. So Kiba had looked at her with his small dark eyes, staring at her so deeply it was like he could see right through her. She supposed he could, really. Smells could tell people anything, just like minds could.

"You smell like him. You always have. That, and raspberry shampoo. Just to let you know, that shampoo actually smells more like strawberry. You smell like fear, too. Like you're afraid of me finding something out, but even more like you're disgusted with yourself because you've scrubbed yourself so hard in the bath. You don't smell like Ino, not much, not anymore." He said, almost as though it were natural to hear that he knew. He knew so much about her, without even trying, without even having to look past her act. It was then she cried, and Kiba just held her and swore he'd never tell. Even after that, muttering that she was right about one thing. Two simple words.

_Green tea. Green tea. Green tea._

* * *

"Mission to the Sand? How long?"

Chouji had asked, stuffing some cooked meat in his mouth. Everything felt so normal, but there was something wrong. She'd guessed it from Shikamaru's expression. He was forcing himself to look just as he always did. She could see his strain, the little creases by his eyes when he was concentrating and perfecting something. She could see the lines carved into his forehead by some unseen force, hidden very slightly by a soft layer of skin. She twitched as he planted his fingers in the shape of a chapel roof. Thinking, coming up with strategies. But she doubted that any of them would get him out of whatever he was so wound up about.

"A year." Shikamaru finally replied. The glass Ino had been holding slipped from her grasp, crashing on the table. Water and shards flipped into the air in an instant, the smashing sound making a waitress immediately rush to their aid. Heads whipped around, a commotion was starting, but Ino didn't care. The smashed glass lay broken into pieces on the table, and she couldn't take her deep blue eyes away from it for anything.

Sand, green tea. Temari. He was going to her, and leaving nothing behind. Not even something to remember him by. God, was it just her or was it getting harder to breathe? She could almost feel her lung and heart give out, and she was suffocating, becoming asphyxiated in this heat. Her head was spinning, her stomach lurching as she tried to regain focus. Kiba was right. Kiba was so disgustingly right, and although she'd guessed he would be because Kiba rarely (never) got things wrong it made her sick.

He loved her. Oh, God, he _loved _her.

"It's her, isn't it?" Ino gasped, finally letting some of the blessed oxygen fill her lungs. Shikamaru looked directly at her, staring at her with those deep dark eyes she always thought gave him an air or mystery and frowned. She was right. He always had that expression when he actually got something wrong, or someone knew something that they shouldn't. It was her. Kiba was right, Ino was right. She had been right from the start.

But it didn't stop her world from crashing down around her. Just like that glass had been smashed, so had her world been. She reached out a moment whilst her friends stared, absorbed in her oddity. It only took an instant for her to grab the glass shards in her hand, will them to stick back together, willing her world to fix without any glue. Chouji forcefully pulled her hand open the instant crimson liquid began to bubble and drip to the table from her hand, though, so she felt like some things would never be fixed.

"No, Ino. It's not her. Never has been." With that, Shikamaru jumped from his seat. Throwing some money on the table, he rushed out of the place, only sparing a second glance to her with a turn of the head when he was at the door. Chouji had a dilemma on which one of them to aid, and she knew normally it would have been her when they had an argument, but she waved him away with the promise she'd pay for his food and telling him Shikamaru needed him more, even though they both knew she was more broken then she'd ever been. She had known she would be, she couldn't blame him. She'd known when it started it'd end like this.

With her broken, just like the smashed glass.

* * *

"What do you want, Ino?"

Shikamaru asked, latching to her, holding on like he never wanted to let go. How fake, for him to do something like this. After she'd actually come to see him leave for his mission from his house, despite the fact that she'd told herself (no, promised herself) that she wouldn't, that she didn't give a damn about him and that was why. But even so, he was her friend, her team mate, and she'd gone anyway, telling herself it was for those reasons and nothing other than those. Telling herself she'd see him at the gate instead, and wave at his back.

"Lots of things." She answered vaguely, not really specifying the truth and the lies. He sighed by her ear, his breath ticking her neck. This was so like him, to act as strangely as this. She hated it when he asked her these questions, difficult and unanswerable without time and when everything she could ever say could be included. She chewed her bottom lip softly, her teeth biting and eventually she tasted blood. Great. She drew away from the close embrace and nursed it with her finger, wiping it away. Shikamaru was staring at her, so she probably looked utterly horrid as she did it. Plonking herself on the edge of his neatly made bed, she breathed in the smell of his room. She'd miss it, she'd miss his smell. She'd miss him.

"Tell me about them." He muttered, though not harshly. He crouched in front of her, looking up directly into her eyes and smiling. How could he do that, smiling when he was crushing her heart with all that he was about to go and do? Tears stung her eyes, but she held them back. She'd never told him, all this time. She'd always wanted to keep things normal. But how could they be when he wouldn't be here? A single tear splattered on her purple skirt, and she smiled at him weakly. That was all she could manage, to smile back. She supposed she could manage the truth as well, if she tried. She breathed heavily, her heart thumping.

"I want you." She said, her had collapsing into her knees. Small hiccups escaped her as tears slid down her face. Shikamaru sat, breathing softly. His head softly hit the bed as he leaned forward, the cool covers absorbing his sweat. His hands began to make crumpled mountains as he clung to the sheets, willing them to create a new world where there were no worries and problems, where he could float free like the clouds he liked to watch. They rarely had clouds in Suna. Suna rarely had rain, so seeing them would be a luxury.

"Ino, please look up, please." He whispered, his voice sounding just as pathetic as they both felt right then. It was so stupid of them, not to have used the small amount of time they had left. For them not to notice, to avoid and run from it whenever it came near. Love was a beast, a monster, hunting them down and they'd fled from it. He'd fled from it. But sometimes, you had to stand up to things no matter how difficult it was. He wouldn't let the demon slay him without a fight. He could stand tall, he could stand strong. Not fall, fragile like Ino was becoming. He wouldn't let himself lose. She looked up, stemming her flow of tears weakly. Her lips were still stained slightly crimson, but he didn't care. She still looked just as beautiful as she ever had.

So he kissed her. She squeaked, but then returned it with full passion. They were liars, ugly liars not to tell each other, for him not to notice that she might have felt the same way. He'd ended up crushing her, with her not knowing. That was why she had reacted the way she did when he hadn't told them who it was he loved. That was why she had been acting so strangely. That was the reason he'd broken her. But no matter what it took, without superglue or stitches or even a pritt stick, he'd put everything back together again. Something so beautiful, something so gorgeous and stunning and fragile should never have been broken to begin with. He shouldn't have smashed it, but he had, and he'd hidden the evidence in his own thoughts and distant ideas that hadn't been quite what he wanted them to be.

"Is this pity, or do you mean it?" She whispered on his lips as she pulled away for a second, breathing heavily. He grasped her hand tightly, not wanting to let go. She leant forward for his answer, her forehead against his, nose to nose, so close yet knowing so soon they could be so far apart, torn apart across miles of land. Would they able to meet halfway, to hear each others secrets across that space? To understand each other if they changed whilst he was gone? It worried her, it worried him. But they had to find a way, they had to. Absence was supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but it rarely did.

"Idiot, I love you." He told her. Pressing his lips on hers again, he silenced any further questions. Between ragged gasps of breath though, she still tried to ask. He still tried to answer. But there were some things that just could never be answered, never be asked. Some things weren't meant to be known, didn't need to be known and neither of them wanted to hear them. Doubts were something neither of them had even been particularly fond of. It wasn't worth worrying anymore, telling each other that it wouldn't work. They'd make it work, and if they couldn't then they just hadn't tried hard enough. If she ended up broken again and he along with her, they couldn't complain. They'd known they would. But for now, they had something that didn't need to be fixed. Why fix something that wasn't broken? Something that put them both in such a good mood, with hearts beating fast and scorching their cheeks soft shades of pink. Something strong, something unchangeable.

Something that held them together.

* * *

"It's been a year."

Chouji said, sitting in the field. Shikamaru and Ino smiled on either side of him, staring up at the sky. He'd only just got back, but it didn't matter. He was home. He wasn't leaving, and everything was back to normal. Everything was fine. Everything was just as it had always been, and if not, even better then it ever was going to be. That day, the sky was so blue, and the clouds were so free. Free to do whatever they wanted, just to drift and live as they wished. To release rain that came only ever so often in Konoha, where the will of fire burned.

"I think I'm in love." Shikamaru announced, almost sounding like he was going to laugh. Ino smiled, letting only small giggles escape her lips. Chouji jolted upwards, staring down at both of them in turn with a look of confusion. Ino burst into peals of laughter on seeing his face, the sound pure and happy. So joyful, on such a lovely day. She knew who it was, and he didn't. Placing a hand over his heart, Chouji feigned hurt with a dramatic expression.

"So tell me Shikamaru, who is the lovely lady? Ino seems to know." Chouji gasped, rolling his eyes in fake exasperation. Ino laughed even harder, clutching her stomach. Shikamaru laughed with her, although not as hard. Chouji tutted at them in a friendly manner, almost as though he were scolding two young children. They could be so immature sometimes, but he didn't mind. That was just the way he loved them.

"Don't you mean with who? She isn't exactly lovely." Shikamaru joked lightly, and Ino glared at him. A light punch to his shoulder was his punishment, but what Ino called light wasn't exactly the softest thing. That would bruise. It must be someone he knew, if she was willing to defend them like that. Chouji slipped into deep concentration, examining the possibilities.

"Sakura?" Chouji said, looking closely at Shikamaru for any sign of telling. He didn't think that would happen. They were both smart, sure, but she was a beast. Shikamaru would hate that, having someone dragging him around. Sure, Ino was bossy, but she was the good kind that they'd had all their lives because she worried about them so much. But Sakura? No. It didn't seem right for that to happen, but he guessed it had.

"Chouji, are you insane?" Ino cracked up, doubling over. She seemed to see the same points as he had, and imagining a relationship between such a busybody and a lazy guy like Shikamaru was clearly hilarious to her. He had to admit it was slightly hilarious too, imagining that. She pestered him enough for ingredients and recipes for medicines, and he often grew aggravated with it because she had often bad enough perception and timing to ask him when he was sleeping or trying to get to sleep. He hated that.

"Hinata?" Chouji asked. That would make sense. Ino liked the meek girl, and often tried to get her to notice that she could have any guy she wanted – never mind Naruto. Her clear eyes were stunning, had she ever noticed that? Well, Ino had. Maybe she had been around Shikamaru and Hinata at the same time? Plus, it would make slightly more sense. Shikamaru always said he didn't want someone like his mother, and Hinata wasn't bossy in the slightest. Infact, if she wasn't a ninja, she'd probably be the village sweetheart that would grow into a doting mother and wife. He doubted she'd make Shikamaru do anything strenuous, so it would have made sense for that to work out.

"She'd never get him to do anything, and he'd never get anything done. He needs someone a bit bossy to make sure he gets something done. Do you want me to tell you?" Ino beamed, clearly in a good mood over something. She might have a new secret admirer, or a new shipment of exotic flowers had finally reached town for her shop. That was usually the thing that made her so happy. Shikamaru's eyes flashed at her words.

"I love that girl right there." Shikamaru pointed in Ino's direction, and Chouji automatically looked behind her. He didn't see anyone. Were they winding him up? When he looked back around to complain, he finally understood. Shikamaru was kissing Ino. Kissing. Not fighting with, not arguing with, not doing anything with but kissing. He smiled.

Ino had thought Shikamaru would break her, and he had. He'd smashed her into pieces, like she'd smashed the glass in the restaurant. He crushed her so easily, without even knowing, destroyed everything she believed in with a few words that sounded so enigmatic about a year ago. Chouji should have known what Ino knew a long time ago, in the sense. He should have known that she'd end up fragile because of it. But unlike Ino, he should have known that it would make them stronger as well. Because nothing can stay broken. Nothing can stay smashed, and torn and alone. No, Ino should have known Shikamaru would fix his mistakes, too. On a day so sunny, with a sky so blue, when they were in such a good mood.

When nothing could change that.

* * *

Sorry I have not updated in so long to all the readers of this. Broken internet, so I forgot the theme and I could not start writing it until a few days ago. But it is here now, so I am sorry to anyone who was waiting for it!

Reviews are loved. :)


	13. The Wanted

Summary: _Give me what I want. Just one kiss._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I get ill too easily. Inoichi has been thrown in for the bonus win.

Next, **Theme Thirteen: Excessive chain.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Wanted_**

* * *

Ino never knew what she wanted.

Shikamaru was certain of that one fact. Sure, she always got what she wanted, but she never, ever knew exactly what the thing she desperately needed so badly was. Especially in certain things. She said she wanted a great romance with an amazing man who could take her breath away, who she could love regardless of anything. He'd never hurt her, never make her cry. She'd always be happy. Shikamaru always nodded, went along with it, because it was easier to just listen without complaint to her childish fantasies.

When they were twelve, she had wanted Uchiha Sasuke. She always said it. How he was smart, powerful, handsome, everything she wanted in a man. Sure, so he was sort of enigmatic, extremely silent and had a strangely aloof quality at times, but he was brilliant. He was striking. He was the flash of silver, the shimmer of gold in the darkest of skies, dragged along in the night by the brightest of shooting stars. To her, he was everything and if anyone even dared to insult him, God would she let them feel her wrath! He had known, because he had been on the receiving end of her fists of fury. That's what she had said, how she wanted him so badly, and she'd never let Sakura have him. No, she'd never lose to that pink haired trash who had dumped her for him on a rumour. Nobody did that to a Yamanaka. No, her pride had got the better of her, and she would want Sasuke until weeks after Sakura did just to win the imaginary battle.

Now they were fifteen, it was just as bad. She said she wanted this odd boy, this stranger who had suddenly appeared. Sai, who had the same dark hair and brooding look that Sasuke once had. But Sai was strange, he and he and Sasuke were really so unalike it was strange that Ino hadn't just given up. Sasuke tried to give up his friends, broke them down by leaving even, trying to destroy his bonds. Sai, on the other hand, wanted friends, often ended up getting hit by Sakura for his often fairly funny comments, and wanted bonds. Sai wanted something, anything, an emotion he could understand. Ino finally had someone she could obtain for that very reason, but when she finally had him, Shikamaru had the feeling that she just wouldn't want him anymore. She would toy with him for a while, sure, but then she'd show him the feeling of heartbreak. Nobody would live up to her expectations if they had no emotions, but maybe she thought Sai would be worth a try.

Not that he cared. No, he didn't care at all. He'd never say it. He didn't want to, anyway. But she made it so easy. She made it easy with her glossy blonde hair, her gorgeous curves, her pouting lips, startling blue eyes, her pretty face, everything about her made it far too easy. The fact that she was on his team didn't help either, seeing her everyday, sweat beading on her skin and rolling down her lithe, flexible form in training against either he or Chouji. She was impossible to resist, the apple handed to his Adam by a tempting Eve. She was the forbidden fruit being flaunted in front of him to taste every day, and his lips would water thinking of how delicious it would be but he could not be easily cheated as the serpent thought. He refused it, stayed away, knew his place. He knew what he wanted, even if he didn't admit it, and just wanting that very thing was an undeniable sin. An attractive sin, but a dangerous and blasphemous one nonetheless. It didn't stop him from carrying it out, though. It didn't stop him from wanting her.

So no, Ino didn't know what she wanted. Ino didn't know that she wanted him, but he'd seen that look in her eyes from time to time after training when they were lolling on the ground, panting heavily as they stared up at the clear blue sky. He'd seen her eyes watch his stomach under the mesh shirt after he'd stripped off down to a few layers because of the heat, and not just because he knew she was staring at him from the corner of her eyes at the time. He'd seen her eyes roam over his athletic body, agile and strong from years of intense exercise and strenuous fighting. She wanted him too. Even if she wouldn't dare to admit it, it had to be true. What other reasons would there be for those looks? Yes, Ino never knew what she wanted.

Not that she would admit it.

* * *

"Just one kiss."

Ino muttered it to Shikamaru, motioning to the various people milling around the room. Well, he thought milling, but if milling meant dancing around wildly, slumping on sofas and attempting to stand up in half-sober thought then it was not such a great word to use. He looked to his shoulder where her head rested, lighter than anything he'd ever carried the weight of. Her housewarming party for her apartment, the first she'd ever bought, had made the place look more of a mess than it had when he'd first seen it. He couldn't understand what possessed her to buy it, but it was Ino, and there was no use in arguing with her because you'd just end up ten times worse off then you were to begin with. She was staring at Kiba and Naruto, the glinting malice and want in her eyes obvious. She had drunk too much, far too much.

"You know it'll be a mistake." Shikamaru murmured back, placing a caring hand on her head in a calm gesture of affection. She slumped into his side, a small frown on her face that was quickly replaced by a smile. Her hand clung to his side for a second before she hurled herself to her feet, almost falling straight on her face in the ridiculously high heels she was so intent on wearing that night. He had begged her not to, knowing she could end up breaking her neck. But no, she didn't listen. She never did. Not to him, who tried to put some sense into her fashion choices, some sense into what she wore, just some plain sense into her.

"I don't make mistakes." She stated loudly as the song playing changed, his start of an agitated complaint in one of the moments he really should have spoke up being drowned out by the noise. To her, he was just a wishful thinker. To himself, looking at the situation unfolding, he was a wishful thinker with the worst intentions. This would be the last chance he'd get to have her, if Kiba kept that darling little act up. A fierce beast inside him scorned his cowardice, roaring up. No, no, Kiba could screw with anyone he wanted. Anyone but her. He couldn't, no, he wouldn't let it happen.

He tore through the dancers in the middle of the room, sending Sakura flailing into Lee without an apology or a second thought, but it didn't matter. Kiba had kissed her. She had got what she said she wanted, and she had grabbed Naruto's attention at the same time. They must have thought that surely nobody would care, that happened at parties. Friends got drunk and made out all the time. No, this was different. It was so, so different and he hated it. Grabbing her arm, he wrenched her away and dragged her out to her kitchen despite her angry protests. She pulled herself free, throwing herself on a stall haphazardly and glaring daggers as he stared directly at her. The normally calm blue had become a raging tempest, showing the ferocity of the ocean. She was the one who would give you all the love you wanted, but if you took more than what she said she'd cut your hand off to make sure you didn't yearn for her again and she could scare him when she was in a mood like this on any normal night but it didn't matter. Not anymore.

"It was just one kiss! What, are you in love with him or something?" Ino hissed furiously, trying to keep her voice down with the suddenly much quieter sounding music. Somewhere inside him, something had lain dormant for too long. She didn't understand at all. She couldn't see what she done to him, even though she spared him those longing looks that he pretended to ignore and she clung to him when she was falling down like he was the dearest thing she owned and she never wanted to let go. Yet she was so blind, not noticing all along the effect she had on him. It was almost insane. He snapped.

"It's not him I'm in love with! Can't you see?" Shikamaru shouted furiously. Her angry look melted away, replaced with a strange look of hurt in her eyes, masked with a glossy smile. It appeared on her face from nowhere, extravagant and large. Her white teeth shone at him, in the same way they shone at missions to the stupid men taken by the pretty girl who seemed so interested in them. They never thought about why, always tried to yearn for what they couldn't have. They never laid a hand on her. Shikamaru laughed bitterly. He could see the things that he had in common with them. Just like she'd never be theirs, she'd never be his.

"Are we interrupting something? Hinata needed a glass of water, she's not feeling too well." Came the cautious sober voice of Chouji as the door pushed open slightly, Hinata entering before him. It was an obvious lie. Hinata looked just as healthy as she always did, if slightly flushed, but that was never strange or even unheard of when Naruto was nearby. At least she hadn't fainted yet. Ino's eyes snapped across to the two instantly, the sudden silence in the house full of people clearly unnerving her. The smile faltered for a moment, her lips quivering. She didn't know what to say, what to do. Shikamaru stared at the two as well, suddenly feeling much more sober and able to control himself, if only a little better.

"No, I was just saying goodbye." He lied, shoving past them. Chouji looked agitated. The dilemma was one he faced everyday, but somehow that night he knew it was something a few bags of potato chips and a persuasion that one or the other would come around eventually, the small glimmer of hope in his words telling them that everything would be fine. Just as it always was. Just as it always had been. But right then, he had the feeling that it wouldn't be the same. That this time, things would not be patched up so easily.

"Want a kiss, Hinata?" Ino slurred, those being the last operative words Shikamaru heard as he slammed the door behind him. He heard a large thud as well, but he supposed that was Hinata hitting the floor from her embarrassment at Ino's (probably joking) suggestion. The cackle of companionable drunken laughter from her living room, the quietness being unnerved once again as Naruto began to make a spectacle of himself. So many noises, disrupting the silence of the outside concrete path of the flats. He walked towards the stairs alone, the only sound he made being his footsteps. That, and the occasional splat as a silent tear hit the floor. Ino was giving out an excessive chain of kisses, and the sadness of his predicament was shattering in the cold night air. Halfway home, he collapsed on a park bench, the wood digging splinters under his skin. Normally he would have hissed in pain, but it didn't matter. All he heard after that in the morning was the calm mutterings of Chouji, and the sounds of Akimichi cooking. Pots, pans, the excited clanging of metal which he was excluded from. He was too trapped in his own sounds, the ones of a lonely man with only a few words he could keep repeating to himself to stay sane.

"Just one kiss. Just one kiss. Just one kiss." He muttered, staring at the sterile white ceiling. It wasn't like watching clouds, staring at something so blank and unchanging, but it would do for then. His fingers connected in a recognisable sign of thought, pushing against each other and curving towards each other, longing for the companionship of something alike to themselves. Why could he not have had someone like him? Someone average, just like he wanted? It was an easy question, and it was even easier to answer. Because he classed himself as average, and he certainly wasn't. Neither was she. That was why he wanted her, wanted something of her to remember her by because he couldn't have her. He just wanted that one thing, that one last desperate plea before he broke down into insanity. Just one thing.

Just one kiss.

* * *

Ino got what she wanted.

Correction. Ino always, without fail, got what she wanted. She always had. Her father had spoilt her as a child, given his Princess whatever she desired regardless or not of whether or not she knew exactly what it was she wanted to begin with. He had always gone one further, too. If her friends got a doll, he had to buy her the best one he could find. Nothing was too good for his little girl. Thus, Ino had become used to the finer things in life. Not that she always knew what they were, judging from most situations. Shikamaru knew that this was the reason, however. The very reason why she never knew exactly what she wanted. Being showered with gifts and love, what more could she want? She needed to yearn for something.

So it was that Ino became a kunoichi. He doubted her father had ever really wanted her to, but it had happened nonetheless, because he never said no to his precious little girl. She had him wound around her finger from the day she was born. He could hardly complain anyway, seeing as InoShikaChou was continuing for yet another generation as soon as they were put in the same team. Secretly, he knew his own father was thrilled at the young girls hasty decision. So was 'Uncle' Chouza, from what he could gather. Sure, they all had the right to be. Three old men may have continued something that had lasted for generations, which was an achievement, but there was always an ulterior motive behind their happiness too.

Naturally, the older Yamanaka didn't want to see his daughter married off to some unhygienic idiot he barely knew, one who would steal her away from him. One who wasn't close to the family, and wasn't worthy of her. Not that he thought anyone would ever be, but that wasn't what mattered. The closest thing he could have to content was having someone marry his daughter who would be suitable in his eyes, and a union between two of the three families of the best working team in Konoha would be brilliant. Well, in all of their eyes. When they met as babies together in a pen, thrown together by their fathers, he was pretty sure Ino had been one hell of a screamer, he had been a sleeper and Chouji had stuffed his face with any baby food in sight without hesitation. He probably hadn't had the coherent thought to decide Ino was pretty then, and neither had Chouji. Either way it had been decided that he or Chouji (even from the age of three) would have to be one of the ones to marry her. They didn't have a choice in it, and although Shikamaru would have liked one he knew that it would have been inevitable anyway. One of them would always end up falling in love with her, despite the fact that it wasn't something either of them particularly wanted to happen. It was inevitable, being around someone like her all the time. So, the founding fathers of their team had succeeded in part of their plan, having their children fall in love. They just hadn't succeeded in gluing everything together to play happy families or wedding day yet. Her father probably wasn't in such a rush for the plan to work anyway. But even so, there Shikamaru sat, in front of the very man he had been hoping never to face.

"I am here to ask for permission." Shikamaru said, avoiding the exact words he needed to use. Inoichi, the older, male version of Ino sat before him. His protective head reared upwards, his eyes narrowing in the exact same way that those of his daughter did. They were not quite the exact same shade of piercing blue, but they both had the same little creases by their eyes when they did so. The resemblance would probably be quite uncanny, if either of them had been a different gender. Unfortunately, unlike Ino, Inoichi usually thought things through a lot better, having years of experience ahead of his daughter. Once upon a time, he must have had a ferocious temper too. Now, the energy he had used for keeping that temper up had been channeled into something else entirely. Grilling possible suitors for his darling daughter.

"Permission to do what?" Inoichi shot immediately, open fire on the fool who dared to ask after her in an instant, clearly choosing to ignore that Shikamaru was the son of one of his closest friends. He had predicted something like this could happen, knowing the man before him. The cup of the tea Inoichi was pouring looked smolderingly hot, and Shikamaru had no doubt that if he made the slightest of wrong moves it would be poured directly over him without a second thought. The famous Yamanaka temper was disguised well with his weekly hobby of destroying younger men who dared to ask after his princess.

"To love Ino." Shikamaru said. The silence that came after it scared him. Inoichi stared at him, the cup of tea in his hand, lips pursed as he raised it to drink. This was the man who could not be lied to. The one who knew everything, knew what others thought, what they meant and dreamed and planned. What they feared. That was how he had to know what Shikamaru feared the most, because he knew essentially what made a person themselves. For that reason, he knew one thing. He had to. He just had to know that Shikamaru thought what he said, that it was the truth. He had to know that he really meant it, he dreamed for them both and that he planned to love her for the rest of their lives no matter what got in the way. He had to know that Shikamaru was afraid of leaving there without his permission, without being able to love Ino, without Inoichi knowing and accepting all of these things. Inoichi had to know that without Ino, Shikamaru wouldn't be himself. Because that was what Inoichi did. Inoichi knew everything about anyone he had ever known, and he was damn good at it. One day, Ino would be the same. If only Inoichi would let the bird spread her wings, set her free and let her finally soar in clear blue skies.

"You have it." Inoichi stated, with a casual wave of his hand. It was then that Shikamaru dropped his own teacup, causing the boiling water to pour all over himself. The aging man sat and laughed, clearly amused at his painful predicament. He was wrong to think that. Inoichi knew, just as he always had, that one day he would have to let Ino go. He'd let her get the apartment, so he must have been ready for something like this. A wry smile was not misplaced, and it was only then Shikamaru realised. Inoichi hadn't ever really got what he wanted from the day his wife had given birth to a baby girl. But giving his daughter what she wanted without fail would always leave him the best satisfaction. Even though Ino didn't know what she wanted. Inoichi wanted her to be happy, and with Shikamaru loving her, she could be. The father and daughter were not as alike as he initially thought.

Inoichi always knew what he wanted.

* * *

"Give me what I want."

Shikamaru smiled, speaking just loudly enough for her to hear. Her eyes shot open instantly, looking above her at him just looking down. Silence couldn't have cut deeper, of that he was sure. She frowned at him, rolling over to one side in the grass and promptly proving his point wrong. Silence was worse, from her. Being loud was something that came natural to her. To have her be so quiet, it made things unnerving.

"You win, Shikamaru. You win." She hissed. He knew she was ignoring him again, and she had her eyes closed once more due to it. She didn't want to hear anything he had to say. She had given up trying, giving up bothering with him anymore. Her words were a cold sign of defeat, and if there was one thing Ino never took kindly to it was losing. Ino had grown used to victory, and without it it knocked her pride. If there was one thing Ino was, then it was prideful. More vain then prideful, really, but she nurtured her pride like the mother of her first young child. She would never let it go, not for anything. He tutted.

"You don't even know what it is that I am asking for." He sighed. Where was the leaderboard, and who was even keeping score any longer? She had it all, even if she didn't know it. So when she realised, would she still want more? She was so self assured, secretly insecure beneath it all from not knowing why she was being given so many things without question. Inside, he'd always thought that she needed to take it easy a bit more, but now that she was, now that she wasn't sure what she wanted anymore and what she wanted was something that had always kept him on edge, something was out of loop.

"I don't want to know." She said, lifting her hands and covering her ears from spite. There was that word again. Want, give her what she wants. She was shameless about it, too. One day, he might have been able to do shameless, but today wasn't it. Neither of them were perfect examples of what good young people should be, so materialistic and begging and pleading for things they'd never be able to own, no matter if they were given permission or warded off by something, fought off even by violent beasts. Even so, he could never walk away. No, not even if she begged him. Said she'd see him around. It wouldn't happen.

"Sometimes, you need to give up what you want. Because there are some things that you need to know, some things that wanting won't change." He said calmly. She rolled over, her eyes barely watching him as he played with the blades of grass between his fingers. He was right, for once. She'd never admit to being wrong. Not even handing out that excessive chain of kisses. He could tell she was expecting a lecture from him, guessing from the way she rolled her eyes. So he needed to tell her. The words, he needed to make them count. He wanted the truth, and nothing more.

"So tell me, and try to do it honestly." She said, staring at him like she did after training, that strange look. The look of wanting, companioned with a small smile. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her quickly to her knees and stared directly at her before kissing her. Telling her what he wanted would never compare. He got it, he got what he wanted. Just one kiss. Her love, he knew that much when she pulled away.

"I want more." She grinned before leaning in for another kiss, to which he almost laughed. He always thought that Ino never knew what she wanted, that she was always wrong about it. But maybe, just maybe, he had been the one who was wrong. Because with her, he wasn't just wanting like he thought it had been with those looks, like the ones Sasuke and Sai had previously received. No, this time it was something else entirely. It wasn't about wanting at all. He was right, so, so, right. It was needing. Ino never knew what she wanted, but she did know what she needed and that thing was Shikamaru all along. He suppressed a wry smile.

Ino always got what she needed.

* * *

Bad for the theme, I know. I am horrible.

Reviews are loved. :)


	14. The Sleeper

Summary: _Shikamaru loved to watch Ino sleep._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Because really, all that most girls want is an epic, unheard of cute little romance.

Now playing **Theme Fourteen: Radio-cassette player.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Sleeper_**

* * *

Shikamaru loved to watch Ino sleep.

She often curled into a ball, capturing her toes in between small fingers. Then almost without anybody noticing, she would pull the sheets (or sleeping bag, or God knows what else) over herself. But even then, she could not close her eyelids, she could not submit to slumber. She was not him, and he knew that all too well. Before she could sleep, she needed to hear something. A gentle song to calm her nerves.

Her mother had died when she was ever so young, and they had told her that she was sleeping. So it became a fear. If she slept, she worried that the same thing would happen to her. She would never wake up. She'd never see the light of day, breath in that morning air, feel the cold and heat, emotions like joy and sorrow and so many other things. She was petrified of it. Shikamaru could say that he understood it, and he really did, but it still wasn't good for her. Most times, without something there, singing a hushed lullaby or someone humming some soft, soothing sounds she would not sleep at all. He knew that for a fact, and she would often get dark circles under her eyes (not concealed too well by her makeup) if she did not have some sort of music to sing her to sleep.

He only found out about this little issue she had, however, when her tent was ripped to shreds by someone she was fighting when she used it in a last-minute replacement for her body. It was better that she survived, but it also meant she had nothing to sleep in, and he couldn't let a girl rough it. He had to admit, although it was (perhaps) a slightly sexist thought, girls were not a rough as boys in most cases, and Ino did have a tendency to be picky. She certainly couldn't share a tent with Chouji, no offense meant to his best friend but it simply wasn't possible. So instead, at twelve years old, he had to suck in his gut and begrudgingly allow the whiny beast known as his team mate (not his friend, or that girl he had a crush on or anything) share his own tent. Inoichi would not be pleased. Asuma could have given up his tent, he supposed, but Asuma didn't seem to feel obliged to. In fact, he even seemed to find the situation amusing. Plus, he had reminded them, they were team mates, it was fairly natural for them to. Ino wouldn't want to be sleeping in the same confined space as a twenty-eight year old. He was a smoker, and she hated his smell. On top of that, the reputation of her father proceeded him. It would be better if it was Shikamaru, who Inoichi couldn't actually hurt. Their fathers were a group of best friends. It was better off that way.

"I can't share a tent with a boy! It's disgusting! Unless he was Sasuke, I'd never do that!" Ino had heightened her voice to an almost-scream, pointing her finger violently at the shadow user. Shikamaru had merely tutted in response. Sasuke, her precious prince and saviour. She really needed to work on her opinion of him. He had no interest in any of the girls, and Shikamaru wouldn't have been surprised if Ino heard later on the rumour mill that he was going out with Naruto or something after that accident. Not that Ino would believe it, of course, but hopefully it'd still get her to lower her voice a little and learn that Sasuke wasn't as brilliant as she seemed to think he was. But even so, Ino had ended up in the same tent as him, despite her complaints. Just as he had thought, she hadn't wanted to rough it.

So by mere coincidence, he found out what she feared the most. Even though she pushed herself as far away from him as she could, pressing her body against the side of the tent instead of willingly have her back touch his in the confined space, he could tell that she was shaking. It wasn't that she was cold, because her sleeping bag was pulled over her body in such a way that it seemed impossible. So, sucking in his pride (because she sure would not) and ignoring the fact that she was probably the most cruel, vindictive and hateful person he had ever met (even the fact that he was probably going to end up loathing her) he had rolled over, then yanked her pigtail. She let out a startled yelp, then hissed before moving to meet him. The gulf between them widened with her cold glare, although it was dimmed in the darkness.

"What are you going to do next, grope me?" She spat spitefully. He frowned, even though she couldn't damn well see it in the dark. It quickly changed to a half-snarl when she reached out and tugged (yanked) his hair in return. Unlike her however, he chose to release it from elastic when he slept, so it hurt a whole lot more. It felt like it had been pulled out of his scalp. He had been expecting to get one of her bony elbows digging into him as well at the time (courtesy of her latest diet fad) but it hadn't come. She was clinging to it soon enough, to try and stop the motion running through her bones as soon as everything fell silent again.

"Like I'd want to. I was just wondering why you aren't asleep yet." He replied a little later, his back turned on her once more. Her small intake of breath, one clearly meant to calm her, did not go amiss. So she was still awake? His eyes had slid over to her before he sat up. She had jammed her eyelids tightly together, desperately ignoring him. Perhaps she thought if she did that, he'd go away. Too bad for her that at that time, he had not quite grasped the concept of Hell hath no fury like a Yamanaka scorned.

"What? It's just because you're here. I don't like sleeping with others around." She lied through her teeth. Her silver tongue could never do much good on him, not even then. He always knew when she wasn't telling the truth. So although she had already been rude enough to him, he reached out his hand, and gently placed it on the back of her sleeping bag. He felt her stiffen beneath the material, her bones jutting out at odd angles. Perhaps it was the diets. They were not good for her, and he'd never be surprised if they didn't effect her health, but he hadn't expected one to affect her sleeping patterns.

"You're a liar." He stated, and she didn't bother to say a word in reply until he grabbed the back of the sleeping bag and pulled it towards him. She was to stubborn to let go, so she went with it. Albeit not without a small squeak like that of a mouse, in protest against his actions. Even so, she didn't both fighting back when he grabbed the end of her ponytail again, playing with it soothingly when there were only millimeters between them. With that amount of space, he could have done anything. But he hadn't. She was pretty, but she was too thin, and she was his team mate. He had no intention of liking her as more than a friend. Let alone even liking her. He told himself it was just that she would hinder their performance in the mission if she was too tired and weak from hunger and more likely exhaustion at that point.

"You can talk." She scoffed. Before she could say more however, he began to hum softly, and the words had drowned in her throat, half-baked cruelness wilting away like aged flower petals. Then without a word, her hand had snaked behind her, caught his mesh shirt and refused to let go. It was then that he lost his breath, choked on the next note, soft shock overtaking his system. This girl, horrible and vicious as she was, was frightened. He could tell. She needed to hold on to him, otherwise she'd fall into the claws of whatever held her so tightly. Then she said it.

"Don't stop. Please." Her strange polite words, coming from such poison covered lips, really did the trick somehow. It clicked. His hand reached up to meet hers, gently reinstating the grip with a small, reassuring touch before it moved to the side, the presence of it still comforting. She bowed her head forward, bringing her knees back up and pushing her chin on to them. A flexible, painless movement for her. He could see the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, then his warm breath blew them as he had whispered.

"You're afraid to sleep, aren't you?" He had murmured, ever so softly, knowing it was a odd sort of secret. She didn't reply. So instead, like a protector, he removed her hand and returned it to her before he very awkwardly (for the situation between them was rarely a good one) reached his arms out and curled them around her, a gesture that he found unexpected of himself. If he could avoid something, he would, but that time the situation had needed to be faced head on. Nothing would change that. Then without warning, she had told him why.

He would never have guessed. Even as a genius, he never saw it coming. That girl, so shallow and vain. So bossy, loudmouthed and seemingly confident. Underneath, even she was human. Any leaders were really, though, he supposed. She was the one who guided their team, although he was made official captain at some point or the other (Asuma favoured him, although he couldn't really understand why) and yet there she was, so tiny and weak, needing to depend on someone like a small child. She really was something. It had probably been then, in that tender moment, that it had happened.

When her glossy blonde hair had finally stopped moving in the smallest ways, the thinnest strands falling to join the rest of the thick coat of gold clinging to the fabric floor. When her shiny blue eyes, so large and full of life, finally slid shut and hid their colour and beauty from the world, a secret for them to behold only in the morning hours. When he finally stopped humming, his throat slightly dry, then shifted only very slightly, looking over her back to see her blissful face, content and relaxed only because of his actions. It was most likely then that Shikamaru knew that he loved to watch Ino sleep. It was also probably then that everything was set into motion, without anyone even realising.

That was when he started to love her.

* * *

Then one day, Ino ruined their blissful ignorance.

"What will I do without you to hum me to sleep?" She whispered. It had been hard for Shikamaru to keep going on the same missions as his team since he became a chunin, and the next day would mark something strange. The day would mark the first mission where any generation of InoShikaChou did not go on a mission together. It would change something that had always been unquestioned. Just because their fathers had always been the same rank, always strained to make it work and had succeeded. They had ascended ranks at higher ages though, so anyone could suppose it would be easier for them. They would actually be listened to. At fourteen, InoShikaChou being pulled apart wasn't given a second thought by the Godaime. Apparently she didn't understand that she was taking apart a tradition. But still, nobody said anything. It was better that way, when there was no fuss over a 'tradition' that only existed for one generation or two, right? But really, that wasn't what bothered either of them. What bothered them was that they were being taken apart.

Nobody even questioned it anymore when they chose to share a tent. It was simply one of the stranger things about their friendship, they supposed. Chouji had never even mentioned the fact that although Ino never stopped complaining (although she did give up on her whining about not being on a certain Uchiha's team long ago) and they often had violent arguments that thunderstorms would cower away from if they heard, they would always curl together in such a small space without a word. Nobody ever managed to keep themselves awake and alert enough to hear the soft sound of humming.

It had also become some strange sort of addiction for the both of them. Without his humming, she still could not overcome her fear. His humming was her drug, the thing to numb the fear without question. Her sleeping was his, the signal that he could slip into his own Ino induced slumber, her peaceful face being the last image in his head. Although he slept far more than necessary, he was often plagued with nightmares and dreams that he couldn't escape. But with her, they were gone in an instant. Just like his song calmed her, to him she had become the image of a distant lullaby that lulled him into a calm state of blankness. Just like anything they could pump into his veins in a hospital, or pop in a glass of water for him to swallow down.

"Ask Chouji to." He replied, trying to sound like it was a simple thing. But she shook her head in protest, blonde hair whipping around in the air of the room, creating a clear contrast against her purple painted walls. Ino had always been a diva, an over dramatic star, but that small thing between them was one thing he would allow her to over indulge her hate of. If only she allowed him to as well, of course. Though he was less prone to voicing his opinions, he felt his opinion of the topic was the same as hers.

"No, it wouldn't be the same. He'd think my bandages were noodles or something in his dreams, and try to eat them. Plus, there isn't enough space in a tent for us both to fit in." She said, throwing herself back into her white bedsheets. Normally, he would have said something about her direct attack on Chouji and his eating habits, but he couldn't bring himself to. Instead, he managed to find a sort-of reason for both of them to get over the problem that they faced. He slid his eyes up at her from the floor, staring at the bundle of white sheets he knew she was hidden inside of.

"Then take off the bandages, and borrow a bigger tent from someone." He said. Her head poked out from the sheets immediately as she slid them down her back and out of the way, sending a sort of strange look at him. He couldn't quite identify what it was, but it looked like she was mixed between confusion and seeing logic in something for once. She pouted, the clear look of defeat. He hated to see it, but he had to. He had known it was coming. But it didn't stop him from feeling any less annoyed about it. It was their thing, and he'd gone and ruined it by getting promoted. He didn't like it in the slightest. Not that he'd tell her.

The next day, he claimed he was sick. The Godaime said nothing, but he wasn't put on a mission without Ino after that unless it was one where he wasn't gone for such a time that he needed to set up a campsite or even rough it. Chouji never said anything about it to him, but he had a sneaking suspicion his best friend knew something of what had transpired, gathering from the new attire Ino had donned that morning. Fishnet, covering her elbows and knees and the very tops of her calves if you were to look close enough to see her short black skirt ride up just a little bit as she sat down. Then the purple skirt over it, which he supposed he didn't really have a problem with. What he did have a problem with was the almost nonexistent purple top which finished just below her fairly ample chest, that rode up just enough when she was training against someone to make any male go a dark shade of red. It was hard to fight against someone so damn distracting. She must have known that too, he told himself.

Even though he had skipped the mission with a bad lie, he had still trained with her that day (not that the Godaime knew about it) and God, he had never felt more like he wanted to die than he had in that time. Her stomach was better covered in bandages and hidden, when he couldn't see the (curse of) curves she possessed, and when the navy blue top ended far down enough to not make his eyes wander (of their own accord, of course) into places that he should not have been staring at as sweat rolled over them. His own words had crawled back, managing to drag themselves along in the dirt by their nails just to see the the look on his face when he saw what they had gone and done.

He couldn't hold her when she dressed like that when they slept. That would mean his hands would be touching her toned, bare stomach flesh, covering a lithe body from years of intense training. He could handle the bandages, because when he couldn't see it he didn't need to feel embarrassed about having her so close to him. But dressed that provocatively, he wasn't sure that he could do it. Bare flesh on bare flesh would feel too strange for a pair who were just team mates, just friends, surely? Flesh on flesh touches were reserved for couples, intimate lovers, and definitely not them. But even so, only two weeks later, he found their routine continuing as it always had. Exposed bodies or not. It was then he had to swallow his shame, and admit to failing. He had tried to avoid it so much, that thing. That feeling. To love Ino was to love self harm. She knew what she could do to people, and she knew how to tear them apart. She often did it without a doubt, either. No qualms, no worries. It was her job. It scared him, too. But it didn't stop him. One thing always kept him going, made him cling to that love although all he wanted to do was to destroy it because of how scared and worried it made him. Just one thing.

Seeing her sleep made all the fears fade away.

* * *

Then the argument happened.

Sure, they had always squabbled before. They had even bickered, saying a few hurtful things. But they had never quite argued, never lost their tempers so badly with one another to actually argue. But now they had, and there was no undoing it. Just because Shikamaru, unlike Ino, had never learned exactly when to keep his mouth shut. Ino had years of practice being told, so it was really quite unfair. She knew that he had never been the talkative type. Even so, he had to admit he had started it, and now he was going to end it. Because he had been the one to mess up to begin with. The one to fall in love with his team mate. The idiot to tell her that he loved her, making her completely and utterly flat out reject him. But even so, he didn't feel bad about it. No, he knew far better than that. She wasn't the sort of girl to fall easily, but her touch gave it away.

In those times when they slept in the same place, her with only innocent intentions, and her hands would curl around him protectively. He would always return the embrace just as she had, and he had always known that she could feel it too. That warmth that human companionship gave, that care and love they gave each other without question. Sure, maybe he was wrong, but he rarely made mistakes. On the rare days when she woke up before him, she would not untangle her limbs from his, just as he would not when he woke up. To watch her sleeping was something loved, and when he woke up to those blue eyes staring at him so softly he knew it was true. Although he missed the pleasure of seeing her sleeping, it had proven his father to be correct. Every woman really was tender to the man she loves. So with those memories in mind, he picked up the radio-cassette player, and looked up at her window. It was battery powered. She would hear. There was no going back on this now. He needed to fix this, needed her to know that he meant it. That it wasn't just a joke to him, and maybe it was more than she acted like she felt it was.

"Everything I knew, it's gone without you." He shouted, trying to keep in time with the song as it began to play. People walking past the shop began to look at him, clearly wondering what was going on. He wasn't even using the same lyrics as the song, and yet he seemed to clearly know what he was doing. Women with children tutted at him, and men laughed and pointed. Children were amused by the odd man, looking so funny and humiliated. But even so, he didn't seem to care. Gradually, a crowd gathered around the shop, pushing each other to look and him and stare at the strange sight. They stared even more when one of the windows above the closed shop slammed open, a furious father staring down at him with them.

"Nara Shikamaru, what do you think you are doing? You wait until I tell your father about this, approaching my little darling in such a way!" Inoichi yelled. Somewhere in the background, everyone could hear Ino moaning, a small whimper turning into a gradual screech. Her father nodded and agreed with her, clearly wrapped around the little finger of his darling princess. He was quickly replaced by her, looking twice as furious as her father had. Shikamaru shivered where he stood, a cold feeling running through his body. That was, until her anger was replaced by a different look.

"Please, Shikamaru. Don't do this!" She begged. The girls in the crowd stared at her, clearly beginning to recognise the romantic gesture. They squawked like a flock of birds at her words. She had clearly ruffled them with her apparent dislike of the ponytailed man, and they felt sympathetic towards him. He heard several offers for dates shouted at him, but he ignored them. The girl above them, seeming so far away up in that window was the only one he wanted. It was like she was in a tower, perhaps like Rapunzel, except she wouldn't let down her hair. He was either the prince she didn't want, or she didn't need a prince to begin with. He frowned before replying.

"You know nothing will change how I feel." He told her. A small smile came unto her face before the window slammed shut. There was a patter of footsteps as someone walked down her stairs, and he hoped to God it wasn't her father. He swallowed.

"Yes, I know. It's just that you can't sing." Ino beamed as the door opened. Despite the offhand offense, he smiled at her. It didn't take long before she kissed him in front of all the people around them. Some of the girls cooed, but gradually the crowd began to disband, clearly no longer interested in his gesture. Her pink lips fit his own. They were two perfect pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, made to be together. He pulled away soon after, looking down at her with a knowing expression.

"You've always loved me too. You don't need to say it. That's why you got angry, isn't it?" He said, his hand winding around her hips to hold her close to him, just as he liked to have her near when they slept. Her long hair blew softly in the wind, her eyes shimmering. She nodded, a clear yes as an answer. He was about to kiss her again, but she shoved him away with a single finger. She needed to voice her opinion, and he needed to accept that fact, otherwise it'd never work. So he did as he always did, listening to her, trusting her to say everything that he could not.

"What can I say? I love watching you sleep."

* * *

I suppose I am not really good with themes, as they always end up somewhat unrelated to them in most parts unless you really squint. But this one has a radio-cassette player in, so I suppose that it is related to the theme, if rather abstractly at the start if anyone noticed it. Ah well, at least this one is not too depressing. In fact, it is more pure cotton candy fluff. This collection needs some of that.

Reviews are loved. :)


	15. The Opposite

Summary: _They were only liars at best._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Halfway through already? I am so happy, and yet so sad at the same time. Spoilers for the Team Ten arc, as well as Sakura and unknown.

Playing **Theme Fifteen: Perfect blue.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Opposite_**

* * *

They always told each other lies.

"I hate her." The opposite of what she really meant, but he would never question it. If they told each other the opposite, everything stayed in balance. With Chouji just eating his chips, with Shikamaru lounging around and Ino being just as vain as she had always been. The opposite was something they could cling to, something they would always know to be wrong but something that they felt had always managed to fit like a glove. Why throw those gloves away when they looked so good on them? So Chouji rolled over, giving her the look of listening (despite the fact she talked absolute crap) and Shikamaru merely grunting in response.

"We know." Chouji affirmed. So Ino began her rant. Sakura this, Sakura that, Sakura God knows and the bloody other. It was enough to make someone want to rip their ears off the side of their head and hang them on a Christmas tree as some sort of garish decoration, or give them the want to go deaf. But still, it was normal. It was average. It was what they said was the truth, and it was something they had grown too used to the idea of to give it up regardless of anything.

"She's supposed to be my best friend, and she pulls a stunt like that! Why didn't she tell me she liked him?" Ino hissed angrily, watching Sakura link arms with her new boyfriend across the street. The pink haired girl was smiling, beaming, even. She probably didn't even notice the presence of Ino, let alone the rest of Team Ten because she was so absorbed in her happiness. If looks could kill, the withering icy glare Ino was sending her would have frozen her body over on impact. Starting with the heart, so the purple clad girl could rip it out and smash it with a hammer. Nothing would give her more amusement.

"Because you gossip." Shikamaru deadpanned, the cue for the next part of their act. A steady redness began to rush to the face of (his only, thank whatever deity was out there) female team mate. Her hands open and closed, balling into fists and releasing themselves in mere seconds. Her body began to shake. The telltale signs of impending doom were written in her acted body language, perfected after years of practice. He knew he was just as bad though, so he could not really complain about that. Ino never gossiped. She could be cruel, she could be merciless and even downright cold when she wanted to be, because she was the Queen Bee and that was the way she'd always be. With those two losers by her side, she lost some of her glory really, so she'd have to resort to something one day. It wouldn't be gossiping, however. Ino didn't gossip. She whined and cried and moaned, but never gossiped.

"You are so full of crap!" Ino screeched, charging off. Meaning, _you are right,_ _and you can't complain because we're both only liars at best_, so he couldn't really say anything about it. Chouji was staring at her scattering fearing people in the street, looking remotely complacent about the situation. Until his best friend caught him out. In between slurps of noodles and soup, Chouji was still glancing where she had torn through like a hurricane wistfully. He must of known Shikamaru was staring, wondering and confused about the way he was acting. So after he had finished his first bowl, it clattered alone to the table before he ordered another, giving time for him to talk to his oldest companion.

"Shikamaru, I love her." Chouji said, without a seconds thought. In those few seconds those word slipped out of his mouth, Shikamaru almost forgot to breathe. But he sucked in air through his open mouth, agape with shock, jolting through his body and keeping him alive so he would live, just for then. Because although Chouji knew they were liars (or so Shikamaru assumed) he didn't quite seem to grasp that the main rule of the game was to mean the exact opposite of what you said. He bit into his lip to make pain, distracting him from the shout of indignation. Then forcing on a smile, he clapped his best friend on the back.

"She's the worst person, Chouji. You know that." He said, desperately hoping that his best friend would drop the sudden crush. Because that was why a crush was named a crush. It wasn't supposed to be sweet. It was supposed to hurt more than your heart being smashed into little pieces, and ground into dust. Hell, it would sting him if he told him. In fact, it'd carve his heart out. If Shikamaru broke tradition, stopped lying for once in his life and instead of trying to get his best friend away from her told him the damn truth.

"Fine. What are you waiting for? Go after her already, and cheer her up. Ino's a sucker for sweet guys, although she tells us they're not her type. That much is obvious." Shikamaru stated. Chouji's face lit up like a shining beacon of light, round and hopeful. Leaving enough to cover his somewhat unusual meal (due to the fact he normally had many more courses) he ran off after Ino. Shikamaru was left only to catch the dust in place of them both, it being the only thing he could hold on to right at that moment to steady himself. He had lied to Chouji enough times, but maybe this one was different. Because although Ino said she hated sweet guys, it had really been meant a long time ago and some things were becoming a ugly mixed shade because Chouji had blurred the lines between black and white, lies and truth right at that moment and even though he was a genius he couldn't think of one solution to fix the problem.

White lies had never hurt anyone.

* * *

They were only liars.

"It's not like that." Shikamaru told Sakura. Or as he preferred to call her, the pink-haired beast. He had seen her strength being used, and never been on the receiving end of it thankfully. He hoped it would stay that way. But when she seemed intent on causing a disagreement between them, it was another matter entirely. She seemed to think he was looking for Ino for some selfish reason. They were on the same team, so why would she suspect? Or maybe it was just becoming too obvious.

He was selfish, and heartless to boot. His best friend was in love with the same girl as he was, and he didn't have the heart to tell him. He was a cruel, vindictive monster, and he knew it. But he'd never admit it. Because as long as he told himself that he didn't like Ino, as long as Ino played along (still acting as brutal as ever), as long as God knows what made everything stay the same as it was, then that would be fine too. He'd never need to admit it. Not as long as he could keep on lying, keep up the facade and keep feeding the same pile of dirt to anyone who asked. He would never need to tell the truth, not even to himself. He could reminisce about it in a few years in his more nostalgic moments, but it'd never matter. It'd never be important. A passing fancy, a whim in front of his eyes. Nothing more.

"Who are you trying to kid?" Sakura snorted. Ino walked into the room preventing further comments, but the furious look she shot at her supposed friend and enemy said enough. A sudden kick in the shins prevented Sakura from wanting to hit him, by the look of it. In an instant, her rage was redirected to Ino. Brilliant blue locked with mint green in a deadly glance, the two glaring daggers at one another before Ino smiled and redirected her gaze to him in a passing second. It was so quick it was almost unnoticeable. She'd become so good at lying too. It was beginning to get harder to tell when she really meant those icy glares to hurt.

"Nobody. What is there to kid about?" Ino beamed, her grin telling a million lies straight away, thank whatever was out there. At least he could still read her smiles. Which ones were fake, which ones were real, which ones she really meant. Which ones she let show. The reasons behind them. He could tell that this one was just another lie; another sickly, ugly with beauty thing which he was sure he would not be able to get out of his head for the next week. Her words were clear.

_I don't know anymore. _It was so obvious that he didn't either. It was clear she knew. Just as well as he'd known since they were twelve. With her snotty, obnoxious, bratty ways, she was still the same as she'd always been, except a little more adept and just a tad less spoilt. The years had hardened her, and although the previous week he had told dearest Chouji that she was the worst person, he knew that she had become a lot better with subduing her temper and her beatings, among other things. Truth was, he wouldn't have her any other way then the way she had always been and always would be.

"Shikamaru is in love, as are you." Sakura announced, pointing accusingly at Ino. Another quick, well-aimed kick hit Sakura behind the knee, making her drop to the floor in pain. She whined loudly, then let out a small his when Ino laughed at her. Violently making rude gestures at the blonde, Sakura said that she was going to be crippled for life before forcing herself up to leave and heal it, with the promise that she would return later for revenge with a small smile on her face. She clearly believed she had achieved something. It'd be another lie to say she hadn't, because the air between them became so tense it could have kept Naruto still.

"So, Ino, you're in love again? Who with this time?" Shikamaru drawled, a small smirk on his face upon seeing her angry expression. He raised a hand, a sign that it was a joke, and to be taken as such. She still didn't seem to find it amusing. Her fingertips curled around the plastic tray of operating instruments that Sakura had been cleaning so tightly it looked as though the plastic would crack. He noticed her nails were bitten. Ino was not one to bite her nails. She was clearly stressed, if she was allowing her permanent vanity to slip in even the slightest ways.

"I think you know." Ino stated. He almost forgot how to breathe. She'd gone and done it. She'd broken the mold, and ruined everything with a few words. He didn't know how to reply. Opening his mouth, he planned on telling her the entire story. If they were going to stop this, they needed to stop it then and there. They had lied for such a long time, and if they didn't destroy the habit then their worlds would probably come crashing down upon them, crushing them ruthlessly. If she was going to start to tell the truth, even in that most unromantic, inopportune place it was time he did the same.

"Ino, I-" His words were cut off. A sudden banging open of the door announced Chouji's arrival, and seeing his beaming, unknowing face Shikamaru didn't know whether to feel thankful or hate himself all the more for not being able to do what she'd just done and for once in his life tell the damn truth. The plastic tray in her fists finally cracked, sending metal objects across the table and flying to the floor.

"Are you having another argument?" Chouji asked, his eyes flicking between them. The tensed muscles in Ino's arms released, giving way as she bent down to pick up the scattered items. Her face was bright red with some sort of emotion, although he couldn't tell if it was a blush from embarrassment or if it was just that she was extremely angry. He bent down to help her, avoiding her eyes as he answered his best friend.

"Ino thinks that she's in love." Shikamaru muttered. Although he didn't specify with who, he could almost feel Chouji's happiness escalate without any actual given warning. If Ino noticed however, she didn't say anything. Busying herself with things that would keep her mind from wandering seemed to be her forte in that moment, seeing as she was managing to do so much. It was hard to subdue bitter thoughts sometimes. When Asuma died, she busied herself by slaving in front of the mirror to look good so she could find her love, and she had immersed herself in training. Now when something was teetering on the edge of ruin, that something being the very existence of Team Ten, she was busying herself by playing nurse. He couldn't deny he was just as bad, though. He was so immersed in Chouji he was forgetting about his own life.

"Well, I was just going to ask you if you wanted to go to get some lunch, but I suppose we should celebrate. Who is it, Ino?" Chouji questioned, clearly clinging to a rather large hope. Then in that moment, their eyes met. Dark brown and sky blue melded in a few seconds. Her lips quivered. Her expression almost read _traitor_, and questioned _why_ he hadn't told her. She gripped the operational tools tightly, although she could feel the blades digging into the flesh of her hand. She knew.

"You tell me." She said as she stared at Shikamaru coldly, throwing them to the floor. Blood slid down some of the blades, some small drops splattering next to them to create an image like one from a grotesque horror movie. Except there was one wrong thing. It was much more real, with much more romance and unknowing. Even on top of that, a heap of dormant heartbreak, waiting to be awoken in the most sudden moment before all of their eyes. They wouldn't even know it until they felt it. Unless of course, the wave had already erupted, and Ino had been the first person to feel it because she knew that she couldn't have what she loved. She barged her way past them both, and somewhere down the corridor he heard Sakura shouting that she was dripping blood down the corridor and sounding rather worried, but from what she said back (which was rather rude, and didn't really suit her) she was gone within minutes, leaving Chouji to stare at him in obvious questioning. He chewed his bottom lip. He had always thought he was a good friend, but right then he didn't really feel like one.

"What was that about?" Chouji asked, staring at his worst best friend with confusion. Shikamaru looked up, smiling at him in what he assumed was a happy manner. As long as he looked as though everything was fine, as though everything was just as it had always been, then hopefully Chouji would never need to know. But deep inside him, something welled up brutally like sickness screaming as it pushed up through his throat. He raised his hand to his friend, then opened it. He pointed to where Ino's cut had been.

"We all look like we feel." He stated, before charging after the blonde with a newfound energy that he had never exhibited before. He was used to being lazy, letting life take it's course. He had always told himself that things were the way they were meant to be just because it was fate, and nothing would change the plans life had in store for them. But by not doing anything to go against them, he was letting life walk over him without hesitation, and letting someone precious walk out of his life. Her bloody hand was stained with pain, hurt and discomfort. It was torn to ribbons because of him. His hand was unmarred to the eye, but long ago on some stupid, almost suicidal mission a small scar had been created on it. A small, white mark that you could only see if you knew it was there. Their lying was going to destroy them both, and they needed to quit the habit whilst they were ahead. Of that he was sure.

If the entire mess remained as it was, they would still only be liars for the rest of their lives. They would only ever be liars at best, even. That was a future he didn't want. If it were kept in a cage, tied down with knots he'd remove them and open the door to release it. If it were chained down, he would remove the shackles. The only wrong thing was that Chouji was standing in front of that gate, and even though he was his best friend for now he had to walk past him and if he protested they'd fight over the keys to the door of release. Shikamaru just hoped that this would all be worth it. That Ino would love him, and perhaps one day one more thing he wanted would be acquired, even if he didn't deserve it.

The forgiveness of Chouji.

* * *

It was up to them to create change.

"What now?" Ino said between short breaths, looking at him agitatedly. A cigarette dangles between her fingers, precariously looming and ready to fall on her uncovered skin to burn her. He frowned. They used to be his, those cigarettes. They had kept him sane. Six months prior to now, that was. Then a day before that, they had belonged to a great man who they had never really appreciated. He had a packet of red, though. Around Ino lay packets of every colour, and they certainly weren't hers either. They were his. When Asuma had died, he'd went out and bought a pack of every colour. Each colour for a different thing.

Green for himself and the forest, yellow for Chouji and happiness, red for Kurenai and love, then black for Asuma and death. But although there were all those, there was still one more colour. Blue. A brilliant, melancholy colour of mourning and tears, which could be so much more attractive and beautiful in the morning sun when it sparkled in lakes and surrounded the clouds in the sky. The colour he had always associated with Ino, and her brilliant blue eyes.

"You're smoking." He said, no emotion in his voice. He stared down at her blankly, a sign of disappointment in others that most close people to him would recognise. She clearly did, although she just frowned at it in retort. She pushed a billowing cloud of grey from her lips, obscuring her view of the sky as she looked up at it. The wind blew the ashes in her eyes as she tapped the end of the cigarette, making them water. But still, she didn't seem to care in the slightest. She moved her hand back again, and drew another cancer inducing cloud of smoke from the nicotine stick by enclosing her pink lips around the end. She didn't seem amused in the slightest, especially by his presence.

"Do you want something?" She asked, finally breaking the icy wall between them just as it was threatening to choke them. She was clearly trying to find a almost polite way of telling him to just _get lost_, but was struggling by the look of it. He could see the rage she was containing. Each puff was growing more and more frequent, more and more quick and fluent. She was angry to say the least, and he didn't know quite what to say she was at best because right then she didn't really look prepared to accept anything he thought. To her, he had become to lowest of the low in an instant. Sakura had ditched her a long time ago for a boy, and they had been best friends. Now he was abandoning Chouji on the off chance that something might happen between long term team mates, and she couldn't help but want a part in it despite knowing that it was so very wrong. To say she was angry? No, it wasn't just least he could say. It was an extreme understatement.

"Stop that. Red doesn't suit you." He lied, snatching the cigarette from her fingers in an instant. She didn't even bother fighting back, instead looking at him with something that resembled detached amusement, as if she were watching him doing something funny from afar. A thin smirk crawled unto her face, one he didn't like in the slightest. It was her dark, vicious little look that meant something bad was going to happen. It echoed his thoughts exactly. She merely reached out for the yellow packet to her right, which lay next to the green. She began to peel open the foldings at the top, creased paper holding the cancerous sticks inside. He growled at her, and she laughed in an almost provoking way. She was mocking him.

"Doesn't yellow suit me either? I know green doesn't suit me. I've already tried it." She pointed to the discarded green box, which was clearly empty. He bit his lip to stop him from wanting to hurt her with spiteful words. It would have been easy, but so impossibly hard. It would have been for the best, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. She knew him too well, and she knew provoking him would make him exert himself. She just wanted to see if it was necessary, if he really cared that much that he'd hurt someone in that way. He could almost see it underneath the confident, unabashed look on her face.

"When are you going to stop this, Ino?" He asked, sliding down beside her in the dirt and grass. She lit the yellow cigarette instead of answering, pausing a moment to offer it to him with an outstretched hand. He shook his head, but she let it linger over him until he was almost forced to take it. It was only then that she answered him, still looking away and staring above their heads at the deepening blue afternoon sky.

"No, Shikamaru. When are we going to stop this?" She asked, finally turning her head to look at him. Spun golden hair tipped everywhere messily, twisting in between the grass with apparent ease. It only it were so easy to dodge these questions, to dodge her even. She was a distraction, a stop sign, a tearaway that diverted him from doing the right thing; and God, she was so damn beautiful he was finding it hard to turn away from her mesmerising gaze. Then the cigarette burnt down in his fingers, scorching his skin lightly.

"When you stop breaking things that aren't yours." He replied, staring at his hand. Extending his long, tanned fingers he examined where the lit item had been moments ago. A small circle was imprinted into his forefinger, red and raw from the direct contact with fire. Asuma would have laughed. He had been the one to teach them not to smoke, not to play with fire because they would end up burned. Team Ten were the underdogs, but they always came out victorious because of that lesson. They knew what they could and could not achieve. Most things being what they could do. They had no limits. With this thought, he looked over at her. Her piercing eyes were still rested on him, taking in his face ever so noticeably. She was losing her touch, if she was letting her facial expression slip. Too bad. He was getting soft too.

"Liar." She said, finally sitting up. Shuffling towards him, she loomed over his face, her lips ever so close to his, only inches away. So near he could almost taste them. Then in an instant, she pulled away, leaving him staring up at the sky. Cold, deserting, and blue. A brilliant, infinite, boundless blue.

"You were never mine to have. Just mine to tempt. Shame, the sky is so blue. So boundless. I suppose that is why it can never be captured." He said, trying not to let his voice break. Her hand moved softly to his shoulder, touching the smooth material that covered his skin. Then, it happened. She moved so quickly she was almost a blur. A sweet, fleeting, nicotine-tasting kiss was planted lightly on his lips.

"Not true. The sky is a perfect shade of blue, you know?" Ino said. She had just changed it all, created something new in an instant. A time where they didn't have to lie to each other. The sky really was a perfect shade of blue. He extended his hand, clasping hers in it tightly. If he could just cling to that one moment, that one time when he had captured the free sky he didn't mind. Even if he knew it would never leave his side, if it could just hide itself, it still meant it was there. That memory. That one piece of truth. The one thing that wasn't a lie that was of any significance. Shikamaru laughed, seeing the blue of her eyes. Although he loved the clouds, he loved that blue far more. They were both perfect, but it didn't stop him from laughing a single sentence out.

"Has anything you have ever told me been the truth?" He asked jokingly, watching as she began to stand. Her pale skin reflected a million shades of the afternoon sun, yellows and oranges shining on them and coaxing them into beauty. Her skin was so smooth, so appealing. Her lips were pink and smooth, appealing and deceiving with words. That was what caught him off guard. Reaching downwards, she grabbed one last cigarette from the yellow box with a cold, bitter smile. If he could call it that. Her smile was so sad, like a cry for attention in her darkest hour. She lit it, and before she left she gave him only two words in reply.

"The opposite."

* * *

A odd kind of ending. You can decide whether it is sad or happy, really. It is supposed to be that way. Now, officially halfway through. Joyous times!

Reviews are loved. :)


	16. The Cheat

Summary: _One hundred to one hundred, and he had learned to cheat like she did. _

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Exams are killing me. I need happy-happy-joy-joy.

Now, **Theme Sixteen: Invincible; unrivaled. **

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Cheat_**

* * *

"Six points up."

Five years old, self assertive, and triumphant, Ino smirked down at Shikamaru and Chouji. The big boned boy was panting, clutching his stomach in apparent pain, even like his sides were going to split. The easily tired messy-haired boy just stared up at her, returning her gaze, trying to fathom just how she had managed it. She had said she would. She said she never lost. But he didn't believe her.

But she was winning. She was winning by a whole six points to nothing, and it didn't even look like she was trying. He frowned deeply at her. Normally, he wasn't competitive, but this girl was something else. All day she had been shrieking and pushing, pulling, tugging, everything under the sun that involved a strenuous amount of effort. He told himself he was letting her win, because she was a pretty girl and his father had always said with a gentle nod and a soft, slightly ill-fitting seeming agenda he couldn't quite figure out, that Shikamaru had to be nice to pretty girls. Oh, and girls in general. Especially Ino, because she was the daughter of one of his oldest friends, and he'd get into trouble if he didn't. Play nice, he'd said.

Clearly, Ino didn't get the same prep talk. Her daddy dearest would never even think about saying anything like that to his daughter. She was liberated for girls her age. Freedom, equality and all that junk. Anything that would stop her from being 'sexually attractive', as Inoichi put it. Whatever that meant. It never went unnoticed that Inoichi always accompanied that ignored talk with a cold glare in the general direction of the young boys. Shikamaru guessed that was what his father had told him was the 'over protectiveness' of a parent. Shikamaru never got it. He had given up hope of receiving it. Even at five, Shikamaru knew that his father would not give him anything he wanted on beck and call.

"Cheat." He puffed, a single quiet word to himself. But by the law of nature, girls never heard anything good you said about them, and instead heard only the negative little jabs at them. A hard clunk was his response, and then the stinging feeling at the back of his head. He could already feel a lump forming there.

"Oh, please. Like I need to cheat, you're pathetic!" She screeched. Both young boys raised their hands to their ears, shielding them from the high decibel noise she had emitted. Turning her back on them, she stormed off towards her home, calling for her father because boys were stupid, and she didn't want to waste her time with them if they didn't appreciate her because she was too good for them anyway. Stuck-up pig.

Six points up, and six percent chance he actually liked the spoilt brat.

That was pretty low.

* * *

"Got it."

Twelve years old, competitive, cruel and still Ino. Asuma smiled almost sympathetically at the boys who were sitting behind her, clearly not at all pleased by their defeat. He had just met this team, and already he knew who was the unassigned leader. It didn't look like her role would change, either. She was something else. He should have paid attention when she said she was a Yamanaka, instead of immediately switching off when she mentioned some boy who the two she had been stuck with clearly held no interest in.

But it was obvious. She was a force to be reckoned with, and he doubted she'd ever been denied a thing in her life. She'd be good, if he passed her. But first, it depended on one thing, and one thing only. Not that she seemed to notice. The lighter in her hand was his, her symbol of victory, and from the disdainful way that Shikamaru and Chouji were looking at it, a symbol of their defeat. They'd be sent back to the academy, and because of a girl, nonetheless.

"So, Ino, tell me. Would you like to go back to the academy with your team mates, or pass by yourself?" Asuma asked, with a grin. He got the feeling this would be another failed team. She was the sort of girl who never gave up what she wanted, not for anything. Especially not for others. Her blue eyes looked towards the boys sitting on the floor as she stood tall almost sympathetically before she looked back to him. She flung the lighter at her teacher unceremoniously as her eyes were replaced with a steely look and they flashed dangerously at him before she turned her back on him, extending two hands to each of her team mates.

"I can't leave these guys by themselves. They'll get killed." She stated, as though it were a simple fact. Both Shikamaru and Chouji looked up at her, clearly wondering if it was really that, or instead some sort of warped pity that she held for them despite the fact she proclaimed that she used the taboo word on Chouji and called him a lazy, chauvinistic ass. Chouji did not accept her hand, instead nodding and pulling himself up with whatever dignity he had left. Shikamaru however took her hand, letting her pull him to his feet, and make him steady. She was the rock, the foundation of the team, and even if she didn't say it she was the sort of girl to try to start an uprising by herself. She relied on others, and in return made them stronger. Held them up, made them keep their backbone, helped them be all that they could be.

So with an understanding smile shared between two friends, a unrivaled friendship was formed between all three of them, and eventually all four when Asuma grinned with them. Even if they didn't pass, they had each other, despite all of their complaints, and that was enough for them. Because one day, Ino would share her luck, share her winning streaks, and Team Ten would become invincible. Asuma returned his lighter to his carrying pouch, pulling them all together in a strong grasp. Ino squawked, Shikamaru grumbled and Chouji squeaked but that was fine.

"You pass." Asuma said, causing Shikamaru to give Ino a wry smile. Another win. But for this one, she deserved a whole lot more. Twenty points, no, thirty even.

Maybe she wasn't too bad.

* * *

"Royal flush."

Fifteen years old, distraught and not willing to show it. Ino dropped the cards to the table, showing her luck. She'd only got it on the last card, yet she had still given everything she had to stay in that round against Shikamaru. Chouji frowned as Ino collected her winning chips and Shikamaru shook his head. Unfortunate for them, very fortunate for her. Another night of loss for her team mates wasn't an unfamiliar thing, but the disappointment of their loss never ceased to strike them.

"Your poker face is too good." Shikamaru said. She twitched slightly, a small smile gracing her features. She knew it was. She had managed to keep it up for a whole week since they had finished what they had set out to do, and that was to destroy the two Akatsuki members who killed their teacher. He gave Chouji a look, muttering that he needed a drink. Chouji nodded, saying he needed one two, and tactfully left the room.

"Say it already." She said, cutting the silence instantly. Her blue eyes had lost their daring sparkle, her smile had lost it's glimmer and Ino looked more dull and defeated then when they had returned so victorious in their mission. He moved his hand softly over hers as it lay on the table, clutching it tightly as he moved softly towards her ear and breathed a single, warm word.

"Cheat." He whispered, immediately switching his hand to her knee, and pushing the purple material of her skirt upwards. She growled in warning, but didn't stop his movement as he revealed the cards sticking out from under her leg bandage ever so noticeably. Her eyes met his in an instant, a small frown on her face. At least her facade was broken, and the poker face was gone for once in a long time.

"Tell me what else I can do to win anymore." She said coldly, her voice almost sounding as though it were about to crack. He moved away slightly, then stared at her gently. She didn't meet his eyes as she stared at the cards in front of her on the table, squinting her eyes at them and distorting them just so she could focus on something, anything that wasn't him. Pieces of paper couldn't lie to her with comforting words, not in the slightest, and that was how she wanted it to stay.

"You could always try being Ino again." He replied almost silently. She looked around at him finally, her eyes wide and pleading, begging for whatever he could do to help her, save her, needing him to God damn anything before she blinked. She shattered her image in a moment, becoming a portrait of something other than herself once again when a small, unrecoginsable smile hit her lips.

"I'm not sure I know how to be." She said, pushing the cards from the table into her lap, playing with their edges, crinkling them. The dismissive, broken air around her made him want to shout. Chouji was never good for timing though, and the glasses of water clinked to the table loudly in the sudden silence. Ino looked up at the glass, seeing the water inside and frowned.

"It needs more ice." She said, and despite Chouji offering to put some in it for her, she insisted on doing it herself before making her way towards Shikamaru's abandoned kitchen. The distant sound of her feet slapping to the floor was the only proof she was really alive anymore.

Fifty points up, but Ino clearly didn't feel like a winner.

Neither did Shikamaru.

* * *

"I look ugly right now."

Eighteen years old, hospitalised and trying to keep up the facade. Ino looked at the needles digging under her skin and keeping her alive with obvious disdain, probably because she knew they could leave a mark later if they were not removed correctly. Hiding behind her vanity had always been something she was good at, and Shikamaru hated it when she did it.

"Why did you do that?" He asked, not even bothering to tell her she didn't. She knew that he felt otherwise whether he vocalised that belief or not. She glanced out the window at the sky as she clung tightly to the plain white bedsheets with both hands. Her stared at her sudden, small display of difference to the normal way she acted.

"Because Sakura is my best friend." Ino smiled, leaning back into the the plush white pillows behind her head. Despite her complaints that she could get scars from the equipment she had never before been on the operating end of, he knew she would make the same choice over and over if given another chance.

"He could have killed you." Shikamaru said, his words sounding a little colder than he had intended them to. Her head remained on the pillow, with her eyes shut tight. It didn't really seem to bother her that she could have died. That she might never have seen him again. As long as Sakura was safe. As long as Sakura was alive. Along as she could carry on blooming into a beautiful flower like she had been doing, nurtured by Ino's love and made strong by the absence of a fool. It seemed Ino never got the fair end of the deal.

"I know. Where's Chouji?" Ino beamed happily, grinning up at whatever she could see with her eyes closed. He frowned at her question as she tried to change the subject. She never thought about anything too much, and it scared him. She didn't seem to understand that. He balled his fists tightly, opening and closing them in quick, rigid movements. He couldn't let down another person. He couldn't let another person be hurt, just because he was so useless. Not again. Not her.

"Then why do you act so flippant? Have you ever wondered what I'd do without you?" He snapped. Her eyes bolted open, her tight grip on the sheets was released and she sat up and looked at him for a few seconds, studying his face. He was ashamed that she had to see him like that. She didn't look to happy about his outburst, either. She looked at him with such conviction he could feel himself withering into the chair, a dead weed before that she could never love. Beauty was something she prided herself on, and as such an ugly plant, he had an extreme lack of it. Like he could ever hold a place in her heart like the pretty little blossom did, when he was so different and rough compared to her.

"Nara Shikamaru, shut your mouth this instant. If Sasuke ever hurt her, what do you think I would do? I'd have nothing left to live for!" She hissed violently, intense anger in her eyes. He looked directly at her, challenging what she had said in an instant. He didn't really even care that it was wrong to.

The Uchiha had abandoned the village, abandoned Sakura and effectively abandoned her. The only feeling she had towards him any longer was absolute loathing. For weeks she had to sit with her crushed, on-off best friend who thought she loved Sasuke, and lived for him. Without him, she clearly felt like nothing. Like she no longer had anything to love. Shikamaru could identify with living for someone. He could only give Ino all that he had, and if that meant his love was thrown into the bargain so be it. Or maybe it was thrown in from day one, from those six points she had over him in victory, and whatever could offer he would take because she was Ino and he'd never want anyone else to control his heart so damn easily.

"You could live for me." He said. Watching the shocked look on her face as his words registered in her brain, he was almost glad he stopped himself from saying what he really meant. _You could live for me, like I live for you. _Because really, he wouldn't want it any other way.

He crashed out of the stiff green seat he was sitting on, and headed straight for the door. She didn't try to stop him. The staff he passed said nothing to his face, but their tutting at him echoed enough down the otherwise empty corridors and their disapproving glares burned scorchingly into the tanned skin of his back. But he didn't care. No, he couldn't bring himself to. He couldn't believe that he'd only just figured it out.

Ino was winning a hundred to zero.

He loved her.

* * *

"I'm doing as you said."

Nineteen years old, gasping, needing to breathe, because it had to end any way but like this. Ino Yamanaka was in Shikamaru's arms, looking up at him and grinning like a maniac although she had a large chunk of metal stuck in her leg just below her right knee. He'd asked why she protected him, he had been clumsy not to pay attention, and now she'd have a scar if she didn't heal it quickly. She'd hate it.

"I was being selfish. I don't want you getting hurt." He said, his words rushed as he yanked the weapon roughly out of the wound. She began to heal it, laughing despite the obvious pain. She looked like a mess, a bloody amazingly beautiful mess, but a mess nonetheless. It was typical of her not to worry about her looks at a time like this, when she looked the best. Though he supposed it was good, bearing in mind about ten feet away (if even that) lay the body of the man she had just killed and she needed to pay attention to what she was doing, or she'd be far worse off than a single injury. He almost found it fascinating that she could hack a person to pieces, then say something so beautiful it could make famous playwrights look mediocre. The way she acted, it was almost like she didn't care again. As long as someone else was safe again, as long as he was safe.

"Well it's not about what you want. It's about what I want, and I want you to live until a ripe old age instead of dying at twenty." She stated a little too confidently, looking to her healed leg and then to him as if to make a point. She'd be lucky to live to the year after herself, the way she acted.

She was the youngest person in the Yamanaka clan, and yet also one of the highest ranked. She'd passed the torture and interrogation test three months ago in record time, and was then immediately placed under the tutelage of the not quite mentally sane Ibiki, and on the odd day the disturbed Anko or the skirt-chasing Genma. He didn't know which of the three was the worst, and he had no desire to find out, as he had the feeling that the senbon-chewing man would end up with a broken jaw if he knew. She often bit off more than she could chew, and was hesitant to actually raise a hand to a prisoner. Sure, she got the information out of them anyway because of her skill, but he still had to wonder if she would hurt someone if they threatened to kill her if they ever got out of there. He doubted it. She was getting too kind, and her eccentric methods of getting information often involved not doing so much as lifting a finger against someone. She'd get herself killed before she even hit twenty, if she carried on like that.

"You weren't made to die in my place." Shikamaru replied stiffly. Ino looked to him, her eyes dancing with sadness as they met his. She leaned forward, still smiling, still full if that never ending fake joy only she could summon at moments like that. Her hand moved to his knee, a small gesture of emotion. One of the few he had seen in years to show that she was really still in there somewhere.

"You don't know that. Fate ties us all together, holds us to what was meant to be. What we were meant to do. Unless you know the future, you have no right to dictate to me." She said, almost in a childlike manner. He almost smiled. Still, at nineteen, she believed in fate. She thought that whatever happened was meant to be, and no amount of pushing or shoving on her part (even if she did fight against it) would work. He guessed she never really thought like he did. It didn't need to be pushed or shoved if it could be evaded.

"Can't you see what you do, when you do things like this?" He muttered, burying his hands in the grass. She blinked innocently as he glared at the ants, trying to look at anything but her. In fact, he could even have looked at an inanimate object. As long as he didn't need to look into those azure eyes, he wouldn't be questioned too much. Although she would not push and shove fate, she would push and shove others. Especially him. It almost felt like he couldn't win either way. He told her off, and she found out more than he wanted her to know because he couldn't control his mouth for once in his life. He didn't tell her off, and she came just a few inches closer to dying each time. It was driving him insane.

"You need to stop being scared of losing me. Every one of us has a short lifespan. We were made to fight, to kill, and eventually if we do live when we run out of missions we're useless. We become nothing. Just as we were before we decided to pick up weapons. We become old, filled with regrets, and we can't stop thinking about if we just hadn't become shinobi, if we hadn't seen all our friends die. That's why the death rate of the older shinobi is so high. They can't bare being the survivor. It's the worst fate." Ino said, clearly going on a tandem. She stopped for breath, looking at the floor with him, her gaze finally leaving his bent head.

"Death is the one thing you can't cheat, Ino." He said. A sharp intake of breath. He heard a single solitary noise as one bead of water hit the floor. She wiped away the tell tale trail down her cheek, ignoring her sadness with a sunny smile and an even brighter disposition.

"I can try though, can't I?" She replied. He yanked some of the grass from the ground, clumps of dirt coming with the green blades. The ants scurried to find a different path. He could crush them easily. He could end their lives unnecessarily. They were nothing. Just like every shinobi should have been to another one. But she wasn't just another kunoichi. She was Ino. His team mate, his friend, the girl (no, woman, he rectified) that he had managed to fall in love with.

"Don't you get it?" He hissed. Her eyes flitted up to him as his moved to meet hers. He glared viciously at her, not unlike she would if she was anything like she had always been. But she wasn't like she'd always been, she'd changed, became philosophical and worrying and even more troublesome. Even more intelligent, even more beautiful, even more easy to love because she was too damn perfect. He'd always said he wanted an average woman out of spite to her, and she clearly never quite caught on.

"I don't want to!" She screeched, finally reaching her breaking point. She was furious, livid, and she would go for the kill if anyone had the idiocy to push her that far. She'd get him by the throat if she could. Grab his jugular and pull it out of his skin, then cut it with her nails and sit in delight as the blood sprayed over her, despite the mess. She had always been violent, always cruel, but she never really seemed to enjoy it. This, however, could become an exception.

"You need to understand!" He yelled back, his glare hardening as she returned it with twice as much vehemency. Scratch that, ten times as much. He almost wilted under her dark look, but instead only increased his own tenfold to match it. She shrieked, launching herself at him. They rolled around in the mud like overgrown children, scratching and hissing like animals until finally he had her pinned down. She squirmed in the mud, whining that it was going to ruin her purple outfit. Oh, wait, she didn't seem to realise it was already ruined, along with his green vest. The mud was caught under his mesh as well and was streaking his skin in an odd pattern, so he probably looked twice as bad.

"Why?" She hollered back. She still looked like she wanted to rip his head off, but he didn't really care. He smiled, despite the situation. She was finally acting like Ino, silly beautiful Ino who clearly had no common sense or decorum. She had never looked better than she had right then; in a filthy mood, caked in mud, her hair everywhere and her expression stony. He laughed, causing her to kick and screech like a harpy.

"Because I love you." The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them.

One hundred to one hundred, and he had learned to cheat like she did.

He had her at the kiss.

* * *

A bit of silliness through the years, and Shikamaru rolling in the mud, alongside a very angry Ino. I think I have gone a tad insane.

Reviews are loved. :)


	17. The Repeat

Summary: _Snort. Anger. Open eyes, closed hearts._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: History coursework redraft fails life.

Playing **Theme Seventeen: kHz (kilohertz).**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Repeat_**

* * *

Kilohertz is a measurement for audio signals.

That was the simple explanation they gave at the academy so many years ago. As young children, they never really thought about it. It was one of those insignificant, unimportant things that did not really stick in your mind. It wasn't important like other things. Making paper butterflies was important to Chouji, because it made him feel happy painting his namesake in beautiful colours. Learning about animal tracking and summoning (especially with deer) was important to Shikamaru, because he already knew all about it and it didn't take much effort to think about. Flower arranging was important to Ino, because she loved doing it and she was pretty like the flowers she picked and made even more beautiful.

But a measurement for audio signals never really stuck in their heads. It wasn't something the young, future Team Ten felt they would ever need to know. None of them were really academic, and even so it wasn't going to come up in exams so it hadn't needed to be revised. They didn't need to remember it all that time ago, and so they never learned it. It wasn't necessary to recall unimportant facts as shinobi – the important thing was to learn to fight to survive, for that way you surely would become unrivaled in your work (and possibly sometime in the future, mentally destroyed instead.)

They never told them to take a tape recorder on missions either, when they were young. But Ino did anyway, because she knew that she might be able to save something useful with it even if she was destroyed. If her body was miraculously left untouched, there was a small chance that information could be used to do something important. Save lives, destroy the damned, anything. As a kunoichi, she knew that information gathering was the most important part of her job. Without information, nothing could happen. Nothing would be known. No new techniques, no plans for war or conquest, no financial backhand deals. Nothing which could possibly endanger lives. Nothing which could possibly prevent too much bloodshed, and rip the strong tree of peace up along with its roots so nothing could ever fix and change in the future.

But even she never expected it to capture something so close to salvation on tape. Something so like a fresh breath of air, a dream, a few words spoken from the lips of an angel sent by a false idol. But the tape was playing, it was capturing Team Ten at war. It was capturing them fighting for all they had, scratching and drawing blood. Dirt caking under their nails they were using to pull themselves up and claw at others with. Eyes rolling, blinking slowly, capturing hazy glances of the enemy. Almost wired reflexes that had become sluggish captured pieces of violent cutting metal and hurled them back in the first few seconds that could be heard on the recorded tape, but after that there was screaming. A high-pitched feminine voice, sharper than the pointed metal clangs and the sound of a dull thud. Then small whispers after thunderous slaps as feet ran across dirt, quiet and rasping. A few words were exchanged.

"No, please, not you too, don't leave me. Please." Ragged gasps, tired and angry and sorrowful and everything else that nobody would ever quite be able to describe. Worn away by age and wisdom, yet young and still waiting to see the world. Innocent and pleading, almost childlike but speaking words stained by blood and knowledge of the futile effort begging was. The sound of pouring whatever chakra the speaker had left into the other person, their counterpart, the person they clearly cared for so much.

"He's not Sasuke." A third person said, almost coldly, although the voice radiated warmth and kindness. Everything the statement seemed to have nothing of. The first person sobbed, almost choking on the small fact given to them. All anyone could gather from that statement was that whoever the man spoken of was, he had done wrong. To anyone who knew the name however, it said more than what was needed. Sasuke was a traitor, someone who cared for nobody other than himself and his own personal gain. He harmed others, he was cruel and ruthless. He was powerful without being a strong dictator. He had once relied on others, and taken so much from them it was impossible to pay it back. Especially to the first person.

"I know! He's nothing like him! I know, I know!" The first person screeched, clearly indicating that the person was a female. No male voice could be that high and strained. So scared. So very, very scared and frightened because the person had no clue what to do. The person was panicking but controlling herself, pouring all the chakra she had left into the person who had first whispered.

"I hate it when you cry. Please don't cry." The second person rasped weakly, his voice close to breaking. The female made an agitated sound, one close to the shattering of mentality for those who knew their world well. But anyone who knew the real world, a world of life and joy separate from the fight knew otherwise. Those ignorant grunts, those tears, they were the sounds of breaking hearts.

"How can I not cry when I love you?"

Silence. Shock. Open mouth, insert foot.

Click. Pause. Click. Play. Click. Rewind.

Repeat.

* * *

"She didn't mean it."

"When are you going to learn about acceptance?"

"The day you take up one of her diets."

Snort. Anger. Open eyes, closed hearts.

Click. Play. Click. Rewind.

Ino frowned, throwing the tape against the wall. It fell to the floor, dejected, hurt but not yet broken. Tears stung her eyes, but she bit her lip and drew blood, sending them back stubbornly. Pride was everything to a Yamanaka. Pride, beauty, elegance, intelligence, sheer embodied perfection. The thing he didn't want at all. He'd only ever wanted someone average. For the first time in a while, she felt insufficient. Arching her back into a strong curve and clinging at her knees, she sobbed. Crawling over to the not-quite-obliterated item, she picked it up, holding it close like a young child she needed to protect before pressing down on a button.

Repeat.

* * *

The sound was going to drain away.

It would slip slowly through her fingers like a liquid, unchanging and smoothly without leaving any trace of the memory of it being there. The tape recorder had always been fairly old, and it was dying along with all the sounds kept on it. It was killing all that had been said, creating a fresh start and pasting over the old, worn words that she had kept in mind and on tape. But without being reminded of her own mistakes, Ino knew that she was bound to repeat them in the future.

"Chouji, does he love me?" Ino whispered, leaning on the link between the two of them, closing her eyes and breathing in the soft smell of mixed herbs, spices and finally the familiar scent of potato chips. A large hand clasped over her shoulder, holding her closer, warming her just a little more on the inside. No matter what, at least she knew she didn't have to avoid him. He wanted her. Chouji just wished that his friends would fix things a little faster, because if they didn't he knew he could never make a choice between them.

Shikamaru was the one who had been there at five years old, ignoring the harshest insults for him. Happy to be a loser along with him, content to stand by his friend despite the fact that it made him uncool by mere association. When they grew up just a little bit, at twelve years old, Shikamaru had sat next to the prettiest girl in their class. That could have meant that he was more popular just because she knew his name. But the blonde haired, blue eyed beauty that was Yamanaka Ino was somebody he just seemed to bring out the worst traits of. Still, he seemed rather lacking of interest when they were put in a team. Chouji hadn't figured out why at the start, but he soon realised that Ino was the example of perfection – if perfection was everything Shikamaru said he hated. Not that he acted that way. Despite Ino being catty, vindictive and surprisingly violent, Shikamaru never said a word against her. Well, nothing too bad, anyway. Not that Ino seemed to notice. That was at the start. But then Shikamaru said something (what it was, Chouji could not recall) but it seemed to change everything extremely quickly.

Chouji began to notice that Ino was, well, as she was, because she cared too much. She'd cried that day, bawling her eyes out and soaking the shirt of the guy who happened to be walking down the street for her to complain to (Shino didn't say much back, not that she seemed to care even when he told her with disgust that she owed him) saying that she couldn't stop herself from making horrible comments. She was scared that Chouji really would die of heart failure or some other disease caused by being 'big-boned' as she tactfully called it even when he wasn't around, and that Shikamaru was really going to be too lazy one day to even save himself from some sort of onslaught of attacks or something to that effect. She had to be mean to them, because if she was too kind like she was to Sakura, they'd end up easy to hurt. Able to be better, and that thought scared her. Truth was, it seemed, she worried about everyone but herself. Not that Shino seemed to care much. But Chouji did.

"Yes." Chouji said, rubbing her back slowly as she began to hiccup between tears. She looked up at him, almost invisible silvery trails still staining her cheeks and her eyes rimmed red. He'd seen her cry, but never this much. Something in her seemed changed. Broken, perhaps even unable to fix. He'd say it was her heart, but it was too big for her to have even a crack in it. It just wasn't possible. He frowned when she chewed her lip, speaking quietly. He didn't like it when she wasn't loud like normal. It always meant something was extremely wrong with her.

"Truthfully?" She asked, looking at the tape record kept in between her fingers. She was holding it so tightly it looked like the black plastic would snap. Her knuckles were white, jabbing out from under a thin layer of flesh viciously, making her hands looks too thin. He stared at her, briefly wondering if she had been eating properly, but knowing that even if he said anything she wouldn't listen. She never did when he or Shikamaru mentioned something to do with food to her. He moved his hand quickly, grabbing it tightly inside a pudgy mound of flesh. She was never sensitive, and she was never one for small gestures. But maybe, just maybe, it would make her feel just a little bit better.

"I don't know." Chouji croaked. The flow of tears began to stop, giving an unexpected reaction to his words. Her frown disappeared, replaced with the brightest of smiles. He clung to her harder, almost until he could feel the skin and bones rearranging underneath his palm. She shouldn't have been smiling. She was upset, and Ino was never one to hide behind masks. Her illusions were deadly, the genjutsu she was learning from Kurenai worked upon almost to the point where she had surpassed her teacher, and they were all one thing. They were everything the person they were used upon wanted. They were life, beautiful, seemingly-perfect life. But they were trapped. Like a butterfly in love with a larger animal, that should have known it would only end up being crushed and fragile. What a masochistic butterfly.

What a kind, unassuming boar not to see what was right in front of her. What a foolish, acting deer, pretending not to love what he was drawn to, tricking even his butterfly friend that had treated him with respect for so many years, clinging to him and staying by his side in equilibrium with nature. But the equilibrium was dynamic. The dynamic equilibrium, the perfect balance affected by change, would come to be broken by a single other part of the forest. The boar. So it was that Team Ten would love, but not be loved, trapped in a confused web of deceit and wanting.

So it came to be that Chouji fell in love with Ino, who was in love with Shikamaru. His best friend. Ino never knew of the love she received, unlike Shikamaru. Shikamaru knew it all too well, and feared it like nothing else. But even so, Ino was breaking his heart every day. Every time Chouji gave her comfort, he was paining himself. Knowing he was only the guy she would describe as _'such a good friend' _when talking to Sakura, Shizune or one of the many other female friends she had when he was asked about. But Shikamaru was the one she loved, the one she would never give up. Someone so different to him. Shikamaru was cruel to be kind, just as she was. Shrewd and cold, never thinking of himself, and Chouji was sure that if Team Ten had never come into existence like generations of the fates of their families had dictated they would, or if Ino had never been a shinobi, or if they had just met one day, Shikamaru and Ino would have managed to fit together like nothing else. She would wear the pants in their relationship, she would give him two average children although she was beautiful, and they would live together happily until old age, when he would die before she did and Chouji could safely say she was just his best friends wife, a good friend. Nothing more. Nothing less. But that wasn't the way it was meant to be.

"I'm a sick, self-harming person, aren't I?" Ino muttered, her grip on the cassette player in her other hand relaxing. It clattered to the floor, dejected and alone. By some cruel twist of God-knows-what, the electronic equipment tipped to the side with her strength, the buttons hitting the floor. Click. Play.

"_She didn't mean it."_

Oh, but she did. Ino rarely meant the words she said. She said them flippantly, used them to make others feel better or worse. To give or take, to dictate what she wanted to happen. On the odd occasion, it completely backfired. Rarer times, it came back to get her. One time, it even slipped into rumours, and resulted in her losing her best friend just because she said she thought some boy was cute, not really liking him more or less than anyone else. Just stating that she thought he was pretty, not that he would like that word. Handsome, maybe, she'd told them at thirteen. Apologies to her though? They were giving up her pride, something the Yamanakas had plenty of. But one thing Ino never used flippantly was the phrase 'I love you.' It was designed to show affection, which she could show easily, but it got to many people in trouble. She didn't like it, and she'd only say it to someone when she actually meant it.

"No." Chouji said, not saying that she had the wrong person. She was hurting herself by letting the tape live although it had such a long life, by keeping hope, sure. But she wasn't sick. She wasn't coming back for more to the person directly, clinging to them like they could give new life, like they could learn to give up and love another instead in time. She wasn't the one self-harming, giving herself a little more of a rush and a little more pain each time she cried. She couldn't run to help herself, after all. Ino wasn't the sort of girl for self-help, because before it had just made her even worse because she was so stubborn and aggrieved. He was the sick one, coming back for more pain and self-harming by comforting her without ever telling her three simple words that could do to her just what she had done to Shikamaru. Three insanely simple words, that created such complexities in life that it was almost like they were designed to create absolute madness. He chewed his bottom lip as the cassette clicked again, the memories they had been reminded of stopping instantly. Ino picked it up, grinning at Chouji madly for a moment.

"This needs some happier memories on it, my darling Chouji. Wallowing in self-pity isn't going to help me, is it? Got anything to say?" She beamed, her pinky finger clicking down on the record button without hesitation, waiting for him to oblige. She knew he'd never say no. He could never say no to her. It was just too hard. Among other things, Ino was the curious sort and whilst the saying was curiosity killed the cat, Chouji had learned that although curiosity got her in danger there were things worse than death that he had come to know of throughout his short life. At fifteen, he already learned about many things.

The lazy boy who had once been brilliant at animal tracking and summoning taught him to watch the shadows, because Shikamaru knew that ninjutsu was just as deceptive as genjutsu when it came to certain things, and from the small medicine library his family kept he knew that ugly things could happen in the dark that couldn't be cured. The cute girl who had once liked flower arranging (and only still did it in shop from force of habit, as she'd arranged to many bouquets for graves as time had passed) had taught him about the much nastier side of torture and interrogation, the voices of her father and Ibiki Morino echoing ominously in her own as she stated the things she was allowed to and would probably have to do at some point, as well as the fact that so far the most damage she had to do to herself before she had made a man go insane was break a nail as she fell against the wall when she entered his mind and began pulling his life apart with apparent ease. She didn't say she enjoyed it, but the lesson remained in his head just as Shikamaru's had.

Then finally, from the big-boned kid who had liked creating paper butterflies, himself, he had learned that life was cruel. Beauty was fleeting and there were ways to make it last, but when Konoha had almost been invaded by the man who very nearly killed his father, he had seen a woman who saved his life more than once who was, in a matter of speaking, made from paper. She could change into a million paper butterflies if she wanted, that he knew. He also knew that she had wings, and paper butterfly by paper butterfly they had been clipped away so she could no longer fly. He knew that that woman, the woman in the red-clouded cloak with deep blue hair had been beautiful once. But life had changed that, and whilst she still looked ever so pretty (she had the same impossibly blue eyes as Ino, even when they were cold and dead), she was more injured than anybody he had ever seen, even without being cut and bloodied.

"I think Shikamaru is idiotic for a genius. Who doesn't love you?"

Realisation. Blinking. Woken dreaming, blankly sleeping.

Click. Pause. Click. Rewind.

Repeat.

* * *

Kilohertz is a measurement for audio signals.

That was the simple explanation they gave at the academy so many years ago. But now, Chouji was not a student. He was a kindhearted soul, good with children, yet without his own to teach the vital lesson he had learned from his own education. Everything that you were taught in the academy meant nothing. Not one of the things that you were taught was useful unless it was something obscure that you did not really pay attention to or never really had an interest in.

Animal tracking and summoning hadn't been useful to Shikamaru. He had never really needed to summon anything, his skill at logic and deduction, planning and preparation meant that he had no need to. Flower arranging hadn't been useful to Ino. All she used it for was making bouquets for graves, and rarely for any joyful occasions. She'd lost the enjoyment she had always gained from making something beautiful, seeing as the beauty was only existent for cold reasons. Making paper butterflies had certainly never been useful to him in any sort of way at all. Yet here he was, at twenty years old, doing it once more.

"Paint the butterflies how you want to." He instructed, watching as the young children either groaned or took some joy in what they had been told to do. The more creative ones would be like him, he knew that. The ones who groaned would be the future Inos, the popular and gorgeous ones girls and the dashing would-be debonair boys everyone wanted to be because they didn't even have to try to be loved. It just came naturally. The ones who didn't even bother to pick up the paintbrush? Shikamarus. Tiny, still genius Shikamarus who couldn't be less concerned with the fact that he would probably end up not passing them due to their sheer laziness.

"At least they know to look like they feel. I was under the impression they were beginning to toughen up the younger kids in the academies, from Tsunade's complaints about the elders wanting to make alterations to what they are currently learning." A droning voice stated plainly, the classroom door sliding open. A few children looked up at the distraction that was Nara Shikamaru, some coughing and their eyes watering due to the smoke coming from the cigarette hanging lopsidedly out of the corner of his mouth.

"They will be allowed to feel what they want." Chouji muttered stubbornly. Shikamaru tutted, though not coldly. Chouji was always a soft person, too sweet and nice. He would never teach them clause twenty-five, and Shikamaru couldn't say he minded too much about it. They were just kids, after all. Even though Chouji would probably get into a deep amount of trouble with the council, he wasn't a rebel who did too much wrong. He would get away with it, that he knew.

"Just don't let those girls become walking disasters. Those types are easy to love, and we need some more decent male fighters around here so they could prove to be a little too distracting." Shikamaru gestured weakly to the future Ino-like girls, the future walking disasters. The trainwrecks you could never look away from, because they were so capturing. Ino herself never looked ahead to the future, never thought of the consequences of her actions, didn't edit her words, and was full of mistakes. That was, Shikamaru thought, just what made her so amazing.

"They're seven or eight, Shikamaru. Now put the cigarette out." Chouji replied, frowning slightly. His best friend shrugged, flipping the item in his hand to the floor and stamping it out on the wooden boards brutally. Their eyes met for a brief second. Sad. Shikamaru looked unbelievably sad, and Chouji was surprised he hadn't realised it earlier. Shikamaru shrugged, stretching his neck out and yawning slightly before a more serious expression came over his face.

"I know this isn't a good time, but we need to talk." Shikamaru said, as though it were the simplest thing he had ever said. Chouji busied himself with feigning enthusiasm in one of the butterflies a child had painted in orange, and was animatedly showing him, but he understood. He knew.

"Does Ino know?" Chouji asked, his lips pursing into a small line. Shikamaru frowned, doing the same. The children stopped, the room filling with silence. The door had banged open once more, a stunning blonde they recognised and knew as being the rather temperamental friend of their teacher standing in the doorway.

"Do I know what?" Ino asked, staring directly at both of them as though nothing had changed at all. Her eyes were fierce rather than tired and dead like they had become lately, instead demanding and fiery like they had been before the entire mess had been created. The young girls Chouji had labeled the future versions of her stared at her in awe, like she was a golden idol. Bad for the soul, but everything they aspired to be like. The boys however, for which he was thankful, didn't seem to take much interest in her. But he did, when he saw what was in her hand. The tape recorder. Almost broken, but not quite. He could guess the audio was still dying, maybe she'd wanted him to fix it. Maybe hearing his selfish words, knowing that someone loved her made her feel a little better. Shikamaru stared around at the class, then mouthing a quick apology at Chouji, he ran and grabbed her hand before dragging her out of the room. Somewhere in between the noise starting again, the endless giggles of the young children surrounding him and their careless chatter, he heard it. He heard it so loudly. It dug into his brain, remaining in place, staying carved in.

"I love you."

Clatter. Smash. Broken plastic, shredded butterflies.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

* * *

I abused Chouji. Oh my, that is just not on. What am I doing?

Reviews are loved. :)

* * *


	18. The Sick

Summary: _This interrogation department gave the council a taste of being the Kankuro of this world, the puppet-master and I am just...what's the word? Expendable. That's the reason why I'm so dangerous._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Have I ever mentioned how good lemon quorn chicken tastes? Because it tastes awesome. It makes me want to do something energy-using, like writing this. It is the remedy of many things.

Now, **Theme Eighteen: "Say ahh...."**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Sick_**

* * *

"Trauma bonding."

Shikamaru said it as though it were a simple phrase, although his disgust with the two words was plain. The eyes of the blonde girl flickered slightly, breaking her calm expression for barely a few seconds. It did not go unnoticed. She did not break her eye contact with him, however, stubbornly grinning despite the circumstances. She was always one for a witty comeback, and today she had not stemmed her flow of them for a good few hours before she grew bored. But now, she wanted her plaything again.

"It wasn't traumatic. Watch your mouth." She reprimanded him gleefully, her eyes glinting in the dim light as he placed the candle-holding metal pot in his hand to the floor. It almost made her look manic. She probably was, at this point. But she was still amazing. She probably always would be to him. She was anything but ugly, even coated in dried crimson blood and mud caked into her untamed hair. He supposed that had to be put down to Ibiki really, she had always taken pride in her appearance.

"Bonding-to-the-perpetrator good enough, then?" He replied (or rather, snapped.) She was a malicious, spiteful little pig when she wanted to be. Suited her name. She hissed slightly, the release of air brushing against her near to cracking lips coldly. He knew the room was chilly, but he hadn't thought it was her presence until then. Her toes curled up, clinging to the dirt, the brown dust crawling under her purple painted toenails. That has always been one of her favourite colours. She had liked orange and navy and purple, and bright things and pretty things and gorgeous people such as herself. One thing she never seemed to have taken a particular shine to, however, was him.

"Your psychoanalytic skills suck, _Shika-kun_." She grinned daringly. Such a tease, using faux pet nicknames. She wasn't too bad at making him feel stupid, either. In fact, she was rather good at it. She always had been the flummoxing sort of girl. The scapegrace, too loud and gorgeous type. On top of that, she was mocking. She was taking great joy in toying with him, it seemed. Like she was playing with one of those non-shatter rulers, which really, she only needed to bend so far before it broke into pieces.

"Too bad I'm not you then. Stockholm syndrome?" He carried on without giving away anything, barely even blinking in her direction. She had been the best. Him interrogating her was almost a joke, seeing as he had never been good at it. He could sit through interrogations, play the victim and suffer then still crack out a smile afterwards. But he couldn't question, never knew what to say, never had the will to use brutal force or to smash minds into pieces like she had. But one thing she never liked was being the victim, she was the one who had always stood up for the underdogs. Silly girl. That was probably what made her end up at his mercy right now. Mercy being the operative word. It was more like he was at hers.

"_A prime example of the defense mechanism. _He never needed to read that book. He's still a million times better than you are, darling." She beamed. His hand cracked upwards, clinging to her neck tightly. He could remember when she was like this before, close to never breathing again, her head tilting towards the sky narrowly, in contrast with that of his portly best friend who had been in the same situation. She was choking, close to dead eyes still watching him as best they could although he was sure he was pretty out of focus and suddenly, he felt sick of himself. He released her in an instant, and in between gasping for the vital oxygen she needed, she began to cackle madly.

"You wouldn't know. We never had anything." He whispered, almost silently. She knew she had hit a soft spot, if her loud fingers were any show of emotion. They drummed excitedly on the side of the chair, creating noises just as excited as her voice was whenever she had span around in her highest heels on a night out, giddy and most likely drunk, then collapsed on him laughing like a madwoman. Those nights, although more than just troublesome, were something almost average in their lives where they could just be friends. But that hadn't been enough for him, and she knew it by now.

"Aren't we something now, then?" She asked, her eyes glittering with fake hope. Had she no shame for the things she had done? Oh, but she was never remorseful, always a girl full of love and ready for movie script endings and the limelight as thousand eyes looked upon her. She was as she was, she'd once told him, in all seriousness. But now, all that remained of what she had once been were relics; the high-heeled red shoes, the booze and the fags, and the small bites on her neck. He once wanted to ask her, _sweetheart: who's exactly are they?_ But right then, he was pretty sure he knew, and maybe the truth wasn't really what he wanted to know all along, because right then it was too harsh, too raw and far too ugly to be something to do with her. The head turner, who right then, clearly reckoned he was worth it. What was she even staying there for? She knew the inside of this place just as well as Morino himself. She could escape if she wanted. Maybe she just took some insane pleasure in screwing with his mind, with the reason being simply because she could. Her mask faltered when his lips pursed.

"You're sick, Ino."

* * *

"Skidmarks of sin."

It was the fifth time he had come to see her. The first time, she'd hurt him. The second time, she'd broken Chouji and the fourth time she reduced Sakura to tears. All this time, he couldn't figure out why she'd spared him. Maybe it was that he was her favourite toy. A Yamanaka had yet to defeat a Nara, or so he heard from their fathers. His father with stiff words, Inoichi with respectful silence. Apparently, the hundreds of thoughts they processed every minute made them dizzy in mind possession. Not that Ino seemed to care. She hadn't tried it yet (well on him, at least) but it seemed she knew just as well as he did she didn't even need to in order to break him down so badly nobody could ever pick up his pieces.

"That's what you call those bites, eh?" He muttered. She didn't pay any attention, and cared less about his insults with each passing day. She knew she hit back harder, setting his own words and actions against him.

"On my soul, wide open for Hell. Your face looks prettier in morning light, you know?" She grinned lopsidedly, staring at him with soft blue eyes. He almost faltered, for a second, until he saw it. The look in her eyes, scary and foreign. He took a few steps back quickly, edging towards the wall with small and gentle steps. Not too far, though. Not to the wall. The Nara clan had always suited the shadows, breathed in darkness, but never could he recall seeing it in another person that easily. It was almost like it was daring him to do something about it, trying to get him to tear it out of her.

"Nobody forced you, that day. You begged because you wanted to go. You chose him." Shikamaru stated the facts in a rush. She half-smiled, cheerier than the usual Naruto. She must of realised that she supposed she had, because she was giggling like she was a seven year old girl again. Innocent and gentle actioned, taking care of those she could and at least trying to so something (anything) for those who wouldn't let her. No, no, they were nothing alike, and he should have known that was a bad thought because he barely knew her then. Oblivion had been his bliss, it was almost obligatory for him to think.

"Almost true. He chose me. I chose somebody else." She said through her fingers as she used her hand to muffle her girlish version of laughter. Even if bitter, he had to admit, he was intrigued. She hadn't chosen to follow him? She had the choice. That was why she was here now, for the things she did. She had no chance at getting away with everything she had pulled off. But he had to admit, he missed her. If she chose somebody else, it would seem more like her, and it'd make her how he wanted her to be all over again.

"Who? Who did you do this for?" He turned on her, furious. She must have thought the hard part would be surviving this battle between them, and never thought it would be everything else. She stared at him, then crossed her arms across her front. The ropes had been slack for a long time, but he had chose to ignore that fact. She raised an eyebrow in the old Ino-ish manor, proud and stubborn just as she had always been.

"This is where it ends, right?" She barely questioned, seeming to already know the answer. Useless hysterics had always been one of her bad traits which sometimes came in useful in the more emotional moments a long time ago, but barely being able to hold her sharp tongue was something he had never praised until that moment. But she held herself well (too well) then, suddenly so much quieter and strange, so very strange. Somewhere in his mind, he is aware that between them, this is a new type of interrogation. He is also very aware that she is not tied down, so there are rules being broken just because she was a little free for once.

"What ends?" He whispered. She stood up cautiously, edging towards him. She wasn't being fed properly, so why hadn't she tried this earlier? Her arms and elbows and joints stuck out, too thin, her bony hips no longer coated in curves and the sinewy muscle she'd gained over the years beginning to become unnoticeable and worn away like she had grown old in such a short space of time. It was possible it was their five month anniversary that day, the reminder of the day he first saw her tethered and tied, almost dead, but not quite.

"I think my new look is too much for you." She told him, enveloping him in a hug before hushing and something that sounded like a _sorry_ before he could realise what happened. Her hand had snaked upwards, behind his neck quite effortlessly. Cold metal touched his skin, curled around him carefully to gently prod an area he was pretty sure was one of his main arteries.

"He said he'd cut that." He moved fast, but she had always been faster. She jumped back quickly, just out of his grasp as the dull weapon fell to the floor. He didn't even want to ask where she'd got it. Even in her current state, she was the quicker one. She smiled, silent words echoing in the air as she disappeared in a puff of white smoke before his eyes. That was what she meant then. The ending of something she loved so much, so dearly, and he'd thought it sadism and trickery.

_Us._

All of a sudden, he felt like the sick one.

* * *

"Sick."

He replied before breaking out into laughter, when Sakura asked how he felt. She needed to put it on the sheet of paper stuck to the clipboard she held, any symptoms. Of course, she took it the wrong way, started simpering with sympathy and bustling out of the room to check for anything she missed on the record that still needed fixing with him. Not that anything needed fixing in the first place. He just needed a long rest.

It was almost thrilling, feeling this. What Ino could do to people. He'd seen it done, but never had to deal with it. Sakura broke back into the room with a strangled cry as she saw him about to sit up against the white hospital pillows, her movements harsh and violent as she shoved a blue and purple pill bottle under his nose with a triumphant look before emptying it of its contents, and grinning patronisingly.

"Say ahh." She said, dropping the painkilling pills into his open hand. He stared at their two mocking colours a moment before shoving them in his mouth. Although they were probably for nothing he actually needed them for, he needed to stay there. Just for a little while. He stared at the graffiti decorations on the bedpost which he had been adding, with some help from various visitors. The cruder ones had come from Kiba, and Naruto had drawn a rather accurate picture of a bowl of ramen which made him rather hungry at points when it caught his eye at any given time during the day. However, Sakura had not been so impressed to say the least. She had also confiscated his black marker, the one source of entertainment he had when he could be bothered to find the effort to actually use it.

"Is she in here?" He asked, not daring to actually mention her name. The pills rattled down his throat dangerously, sounding strangely ominous after he had just asked about something so off-putting. Her green eyes studied his face a moment, before she frowned at him. He'd never really minded Sakura, although she was just as bad as Ino once was with temper and control. The pink haired medic was anything but stupid, and so they could on odd occasions have level conversations about things such as herbs and some remedies. But right then, he couldn't even say he could stand her. That frown was one she had learned from her once best friend, and it reminded him of her too much.

"She got ten meters from the gate before I caught her." She replied stiffly. He frowned back at her more icily than the glare of a Hyuga and his eyes became lined with distrust in an instant. Sakura must have known that he wanted Ino to be left to it. Not that it was going to happen, but it was cruel to rip something out of her grip when it was so close to being hers. Especially something as beautifully suited to her as freedom.

"Ten meters." He repeated quietly to himself. He doubted she had appreciated it being Sakura who had managed to drag her back, either. Yanked away by a ignorant man, and now by an even more ignorant woman. They suited each other, really. He was surprised that their prize wasn't still around to fight over.

"I had no choice, after what happened with Sasuke. Don't you dare look down on me, Nara." The pinkette glared at him as though he were lower than a piece of dirt, filthy and rancid. He chuckled lightly. She really had no clue about life, if she thought things like duty came before friendship. Came before love, even. Even as a genius with an impossibly high IQ who was constantly urged to do his duty (more currently by interrogating a certain blonde), yet he still knew his place. It was with Ino.

"She didn't choose him." He practically spat as ferociously as he could manage. She turned her back on him quickly, stamping towards the exit violently, flinging the rest of the pot of pills at him on the way out. She was furious, he knew that much. But even so, he couldn't stop himself. Neither could she.

"She abandoned us all for Sasuke, a stupid crush! How can you even say that?" Sakura hissed coldly, slamming the door on the way out. He stared darkly at the slammed wooden apparatus. The paint was begin to peel off and show what was underneath. He could say the same for Sakura. Beneath the tears and the worry, she was impossibly selfish and idiotic. Whatever she could not have, it seemed she did not want anyone else to have either, and even if they refused it she would still snatch it from them. What made it almost disgustingly funny however was that she didn't even know what she was on about. To be honest, he wasn't sure he did either. He knew what Ino had implied, but he found it hard to believe that he would be threatened instead of others such as the sea-foamed eyed valkyrie who had just exited. His head ached.

He felt sick again.

* * *

"Execution."

Ino said it plainly, as though it were unimportant. He stared at her a moment, as if waiting for something else to happen. Some screaming, some dramatic tears or a desperate plea for him to do damn well anything about it like he actually could. But it did not come. In fact, Ino did not even seem even slightly bothered by the word she had said. Her face was calm and betrayed nothing. It was true when they said some people could read like books, and that worried him because Ino was usually one of those people. She never hid behind masks, never lied when it was avoidable, and cared far too much about others. Many called her selfish. They just didn't know her. Or maybe, they knew her better than him.

"Don't you care?" Shikamaru breathed, his words like mist on glass. It was like they had melted away before they could reach her. Pointless, ceasing to exist, unnoticeable. Ino blinked and looked at him, a tired look on her face. He couldn't say he'd noticed it before, but he was pretty sure it had been there all along. Right from the start. Small shadowy colours coated the puffy areas around her bloodshot eyes like a new eyeshadow, another one of her old trends. Her eyelashes weren't long and thick, having began to fall out. Her eyebrows were still thin, incredibly so, though he could probably say her body was thinner at that point. She was more petite than she had ever been. Her hair had some threads and chunks missing in odd places, and he could see a unhealed and probably deep cut carved into her scalp. That had to be painful.

"You just don't get it, do you? You're satisfied this way. This interrogation department gave the council a taste of being the Kankuro of this world, the puppet-master and I am just...what's the word? Expendable. That's the reason why I'm so dangerous." She stated easily, as though it were nothing new to her. Then he knew it. Ino no longer had a reason to care, because she no longer had a reason to live. He stared at her, horrified as she smiled so brightly it looked like her skin would break under the strain of keeping it up. She really thought he couldn't care less, but unlike she thought she was to the council, to him she was much otherwise. She wasn't a traitor, a thief and a unjust murderer. To him, she was part of Team Ten (always had been, always would be), a damn good interrogator, and someone he knew that he loved more than anything.

That thought scared him. He was in love with this crazy thing, who to him, always just wanted to be Ino. Nothing more, nothing in between, and nothing less. She wouldn't settle for it. When she wasn't there, being just Ino, when she was ready to die this young, he could never be satisfied.

"You don't deserve this." He choked out. Her brightness about her predicament was sickening. She didn't. Not Ino. Not Ino. Anyone but Ino. She could never merit such a death. Execution was the greatest shame on any family with her lineage. Inoichi was already near breaking point. She never wanted to hurt anyone. She always wanted to hurt those who hurt others, though. She lost herself. Or maybe, in getting lost, she had found herself. Maybe she had found she didn't need them. Maybe she'd found that it just wasn't worth it anymore, not this. Not this sub-standard version of living.

"Says the young boy who tangos to their tune. You can't get wound up like a doll and then complain because it's not the way you want to dance." She grinned, waiting for a reaction. But she wasn't getting it. She wanted to make him hate her. People died because of her actions, and not even that could make him want to hurt her in the slightest. Because the strange thing was, deep down, hidden and coated in fake poison, he was pretty sure that all that she did wrong was follow the right path. She hurt others to save a few she loved. Whilst it was wrong when it was probably for the 'greater good' for her to do as she was told, he was almost certain that on more than one occasion she had saved his life. That was what made this so frustrating, because in return, he was not able to do a single thing for her.

"What will happen without you?" He whispered, his voice still similar to that of a parched animal. He didn't know what to say. What to do. That in itself was worrying. He always knew. He was always logical. It was just that this made no sense, and it made him feel sick to his stomach and he just felt so utterly useless he could not put it into words. He had never been good with words, especially ones used to explain things like how much he really cared about everything he seemed to lazy to bother with.

"The Earth will go around the sun. The tides will ebb and flow. The moon will shine in the night. Sands on the beach will blow around in the wind. Grass will grow afresh along with new flowers. Life will carry on." She explained, leaning her head back on the crude wooden chair without a single care in the world. Never once, did he think to question her brash statement. He always had thought the world revolved around her. So without her, it meant one thing and one thing only. The world couldn't continue.

Not for him.

* * *

"Yamanaka Ino, you have been sentenced to death by hanging."

She whistled in a carefree manner, not really seeming to give a damn. Her eyes shone in the early light of dawn, showing her disinterest. Her hair gleamed slightly, a sudden flash of blonde as she turned and looked directly at him. Brown met blue. Misunderstanding met anything but. Then, he knew. She beamed at him cheerfully, for the last time, before the ropes were removed from her hands. It was almost insulting, how they thought she only needed that to keep her in place. She could have easily escaped. She had before. She could do it again. But still, he knew she wouldn't. But then again, this type of death didn't seem to bode to well with her either.

"No thanks. I'd rather do this myself." She replied loudly, full of pride and as stubborn as ever. Before he knew it, she was in her pocket, a single pill was in her hand and her fingers lifted it just above her lips. Nobody could move fast enough, especially not the lower-level idiot clearly just there reading her sentence for the promotion he would probably get. Not that she cared if he benefited, he wouldn't now. Nobody did something as pathetic as get a promotion from the death of Yamanaka Ino. Nobody, so screw him. Bottoms up. The single pill dropped into her mouth, and there was a small crunch as she turned and raised her hand in a mock salute to the Hokage faces. She never cared about them. Shikamaru grinned. No, she had only cared about him. Because she had saved him. He finally got it.

Sasuke had threatened his life. She wouldn't have done it for anyone else. He grinned back at her in all her rebellion as the light left her eyes, white teeth still gleaming as she slid to the wooden floor. It only registered then to him that he should run. That he should catch her one last time. To whisper the things he'd never said, then follow through just as she had. To make everything up to her. His hand searched her pouch quickly as the executioner tried to pull her away from him. He looked at the cyanide once before chucking it in his mouth with a chuckle, and two words as he looked at her fixed expression. She always had strange mannerisms, violent and odd ways of paying him back. Quite sick, really. Just like him.

"Say ahh."

* * *

I am becoming exceedingly morbid. Only I would think of something this disturbing for this theme.

Reviews are loved. :)


	19. The Beautiful

Summary: _She'd once told him once she was twenty-five, she would no longer wear red heels._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Ninjas not liking red because it reminds them of blood has become too cliché. So here, I found another way to abuse the colour. I feel so motivated, too. How very odd.

So, the new arrival of **Theme Nineteen: Red.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Beautiful_**

* * *

Red heels.

Shoes he wished she had never let Sakura borrow, then received back ready for the next weekend mission. She loved clattering around in those things, spinning around in them although they were her highest heels. Although she was a idiot to do so, he couldn't deny that it made the already attractive girl even more beautiful when she wore red. She'd once told him once she was twenty-five, she would no longer wear red heels (because when you did it at that age, it looked like you were trying to cling to the brightness of childhood and you still hadn't grown up, apparently) and that it was for that very reason she wore those _'horribly troublesome things'_ as he had politely nicknamed them before she could tell him not to complain about them. But if it made him feel any better, apparently the fact that he had noticed her red shoes in the first place meant something. That girl was warped. Like her fashion mattered to him.

She looked beautiful in anything, to be honest. Not that she needed to know, her head was already over inflated enough and her ego wasn't in need of being made any larger. Enough people told her for him. Not having his undivided attention also seemed to irk her, which was also a plus point. Irritating Ino had become one of his favourite past times, as of late. Her furious expression was rather amusing, not to mention pretty. However, getting back to the point of his thoughts. She did look beautiful in anything, true, and she always looked amazing in blue because it matched her eyes and she looked even better in purple for some reason or other. Orange was too bright for her pale skin tone, and she flat out hated brown and yellow. But red, she had no particular affinity or dislike for, yet he had to admit it looked best on her.

"I like your flip-flops better." He snorted when she looked scandalised at his comment on her fashion being ridiculous. Surely, she should have known to be more conventional. Team Ten had yet to encounter a mission where things had gone disastrously wrong in the past two months, yet she seemed to want to attract something nasty. Wait, she was supposed to. Some guy was meant to notice her. But wearing that, he knew she would probably get a little too noticed for his liking, and not just by the guy who was undoubtedly going to take the bait with a single glance in her direction. Shikamaru had the feeling that this time around, he would actually enjoy harming the fool if they so much as touched her when extracting information from him. Ino preferred to use softer methods and always did a better job (that much was for certain, but he could not say he expected less of a mind abuser) but his brutal old-fashioned ways did the trick too. Plus, they were slower, and maybe this slimy old piece of crap suffering would make him feel considerably better.

"I take it you don't like the dress, either." Ino feigned horror, opening her mouth widely and placing a hand over it in a dramatic, faux-ladylike fashion. He looked her up and down once, raising both eyebrows pointedly when he reached her knees and a certain other region. She revealed too much. He couldn't deny that it would make everyone stare, that much was true, because he knew he wanted to stare and he'd known her since she was a snotty little five year old Daddy's girl. That was probably saying something. She seemed to catch his drift though as he looked away to Chouji beside him, who was trying everything to avoid looking at her. Playing with his hands, staring at the wall, his cheeks a fine shade of pink as blood rushed around under his rounded cheeks. Shikamaru guessed that he had noticed her manner of dress too. Painfully so.

"I don't care for it, no. Which happens to be a kind way of putting it." He lied, looking her directly in the eyes. She beamed at him, looking rather pleased with herself. If his new enjoyment had been found in driving her absolutely insane, hers had been alike. Except her victim of choice happened to be him, and she found the most exquisite ways to torture him that he could never have imagined in a million years. If she could do that to the guy who thought up two hundred plans a minute, he felt for Kiba. He must have been flummoxed the previous month when her unique way of showing she was paying attention to a person had shown that it was his turn to be treated like a bad dog.

"I'd love to see your expression if you saw the matching underwear, then." Ino cackled, excusing herself and marching into the bar, leaving him to stare at her back darkly. Oh, she would, would she? He could think of about fifty ways in which he could see said matching underwear, one hundred and sixty two ways in which she would attempt to murder him if he actually tried to act out any of those relatively complex scenarios, and on top of that exactly two hundred ways he wanted to murder her and the guy she was supposed to be seducing. Ten minutes later, he would enter the bar with Chouji, both of them in disguise. She just had to do her job right, and he'd have his pick of which plan he wanted to use on the unsuspecting almost-rapist.

Twenty minutes later, Team Ten had vacated the bar due to not Ino buggering the mission up or even Chouji revealing himself as a member of the fairly well-known Akimichi clan, but in fact to Shikamaru breaking the neck of the man they were supposed to interrogate that night. Restraint had always been something he had been good with, and he supposed that he had never really got what he wanted so he couldn't expect any less, but Ino was just that very person that managed to make everything he knew go completely out of the window in an instant. Because she was intelligent. She was dangerous. She was beautiful. Especially in that damned revealing dress and the bright red heels she cherished, and he couldn't resist anything about her, even when she grinned at him and laughed manically because despite the fact they had almost just been murdered and they had to run for their lives, apparently she found it bloody hilarious. He hadn't been so pleased with this, instead muttering to her sourly as she began to wastefully heal a cut Chouji had received.

"I hate red on you." He spat hurtfully. Her laughter immediately ceased, her mouth clamming tightly shut. He had taken his anger out on her, and although he could blame himself he knew that she wouldn't point the finger at him and say flat out that he had been rude and taken things too far. Ino was that sort of person, and was so unbelievably stubborn that if someone had hurt her she'd either react brutally because it had injured her pride or just sit and say nothing because (in rare cases) the words actually hurt her. Her eyes looked like they were shimmering with tears, but she didn't let them fall, instead healing the minuscule cuts that lined her legs. Some glass had been in the wounds, but she still said nothing. To her, his words were probably worse than eating that glass and having it grate up her insides. Deep down, he felt bad about it. He couldn't say sorry. Couldn't take it back. Couldn't fix what he had broken.

The next day, he saw the shoes in her bin.

* * *

Red lipstick.

Painted on perfectly by Kurenai, then smudged by none other than himself. He'd saved her shoes the moment she had disregarded them, salvaging her ruined beauty. Despite the heel on one of them being snapped where he was pretty sure she had flung it at her bedroom wall (seeing as a suspicious-looking dent had appeared there the next time he and Chouji had been allowed to enter her home) they still held memories of the glamour, the glitz and the beauty of a night on the town. Sure, him breaking a neck with brute force hadn't been exactly glamourous, the glitziest thing they had seen was yet to be thought of, the only beautiful thing in that shoddy little area had been her and the night on the town had actually been a mission horribly gone wrong, but they still held some memories. Be they happy or sad ones. He was sure she'd be glad to see them returned one day, when he knew how exactly to apologise.

After being presented with the pot of red makeup on her birthday, Ino had insisted that Kurenai showed her how to use it to full effect so that her lips always looked bright and beautiful, cheerful and enticing no matter what her mood was. Kurenai hadn't exactly liked her reasoning, but Ino had begged and pleaded so eventually baby Asuma was lumbered onto Chouji and Shikamaru (his male _'role models'_ as Kurenai called them, or _'Mother and Father'_ as Ino did) for the day because Kurenai became intent on going full out and making Ino look better than ever. Neither of the men questioned it. It was one of those weird, Ino-created dilemmas and a woman thing. It was better they didn't try to understand it.

"Who needs Tsunade as a role model like Tenten when I can have you?" Ino had beamed as she swiveled around from the mirror when her companions returned, her comment directed at Kurenai. The woman smiled back happily, then glanced at the men standing in the doorway. They were more like boys, she must have thought, seeing their expressions. Ino looked stunning without makeup, sure. But all that Kurenai had done only amplified her beauty, rather than hiding it like makeup did when any other girl had put it on her. Ino batted her eyelids and laughed, despite the fact that Chouji was looking dangerously close to the colour of his normal garb and ready to faint and that Shikamaru looked utterly indescribable. The ponytailed one of the pair placed Asuma in Kurenai's arms, and stared at Ino for a long time. He didn't know what to say. If he were to be honest, he liked Ino's natural look, but she looked stunning like that. He decided that she didn't need to know, but rather, a demonstration needed to occur.

"I feel sick." Shikamaru muttered, and indeed all of them might of believed him if what had transpired had not followed those words. His face was red enough for him to have a fever, and he usually acted indifferent to Ino's choices about her looks. He was even shaking a little, and any given medical professional could probably tell from the heat radiating from his skin that he was having palpitations and his pulse was racing so fast that his arteries, veins, even capillaries were throbbing. Then of course, he messed it up by collapsing into Ino at an alarmingly fast rate; knocking her to the floor with his weight, his forehead bashing into hers, then their lips meeting in a confusing kiss Ino would rather of forgotten before jumping straight back up to his feet in a manner too much different to his normal slow, indifferent ways. Nobody said anything, nobody probably knew because Ino just shrieked about him knocking her over and her makeup wasn't smudged. No harm done, as nobody knew about it apart from the two of them. Kurenai and Chouji didn't even realise what had happened, he knew that much. Otherwise, he would have been murdered in his sleep by Inoichi who heard it along the rumour mill after Anko or Naruto respectively bullied it out of one or the other of them.

Then it happened. Kurenai had stayed in her apartment with her baby. Chouji had walked into his gate, away from sight. They were both walking down the street, not knowing what to say to fill the silence because normally there wasn't one due to either Chouji doing the talking for them up until their arguing took over, and it Ino clearly hoped that everything would sort itself out eventually. Meddling in situations not concerning her had always been something she couldn't resist, but asking her to help herself was like asking for a death sentence because she'd explode on you through embarrassment of simply not being able to tell you she wasn't able to handle her own problems in a proper manner. Meaning, she could not solve her problems without employing one of her three current favourite methods. One, torture. Two, more torture. Three, mind-numbingly cruel and inhuman mind screwing torture.

"Ino, we just walked past your house." Shikamaru stated, only just realising. Ino blinked, being brought back to reality from whatever dream world she was in. Cult cute, angsty, popular boy types probably. Not that he wanted to know, or anything. The nearing nineteen year old blonde turned to him, suddenly grinning like a maniac. She was planning something. Something unnecessary and purely made of evil. Because that was what Ino was. Cruel, scheming, and evil. Oh, and beautiful when she looked at him like she wanted to burn his guts out and use the polluting gases created to create a new fuel she could use to power a machine to think of another one of her mad schemes which usually involved him suffering in one way or the other for her. How nice.

"Oh, that's grand. Let's go drinking!" Ino suddenly popped out the idea, beaming cheerfully. He frowned at her. Only Yamanaka Ino would come out with something as spontaneous and stupid as that after being accidentally kissed by one of her oldest friends, to said oldest friend who she was probably tempting fate by being around. She knew she wasn't allowed to drink, but he couldn't say that she wouldn't get away with it. They could go to war for their country, kill for their country, yet not drink. Many bartenders in the area didn't generally obey the age laws for shinobi for that very reason, apparently finding them rather idiotic. Correct as they were, Shikamaru didn't really fancy finding out Ino had done something stupid in the morning and needed his help and sorting things out. He'd rather go along with her, get reasonably drunk so he couldn't remember anything that had happened that day and hope for the best. Even if it was a foolish hope. Even if she came out with bloody stupid things and had stupid ideas and was completely and utterly stupid. Even if he was stupid to go along with it to begin with. He didn't really care right then.

So, Ino's lipstick was smudged. He not only drunk enough to forget everything that had happened that day, but he also drunk enough to repeat his past mistakes by kissing her another three times and making a new mistake by telling her he probably loved her. Chouji had been the one to find that out at three in the morning, and unfortunately, he told Shikamaru so the next day. Ino was either a very good actress, or didn't know, because she said nothing about it. But she never asked Kurenai to do her makeup again, and she didn't use the techniques Kurenai taught her that day in applying red lipstick again. He saw her throw the small scarlet pot out of the window instead the morning after, so only two things of that night remained.

Smashed glass, and dyed red dirt.

* * *

Red skin.

Caused by others, created by her, and anything but showing of beauty. He had gathered the smashed glass and whatever remained of the red colour inside of it, found out where it was from and purchased a new pot of it. Along with the shoes, he kept it under his bed, unseen to prying eyes. Nobody dared to go under his bed, not even his mother, for the simple fact most believed that under there was a disorganised mess which only micro-biotic life forms could possibly live in. Untrue, of course, but it stopped others from snooping. But along with those two shoes and the pot of lipstick, he could not put one more thing. He could not take her skin and put that under there too, stung and red raw from her scrubbing.

"Dirty. Still dirty." Ino cooed like an bird, carefully rubbing the towel on the fake tanned parts of her skin. In some areas, the orange colour was stubborn and just wouldn't come off. But still she scrubbed herself roughly, despite the fact it was making her limbs and the rest of her body raw and red. Or, so he imagined. He could hear her words, hear the harsh sounds of skin painfully being shoved against an object (probably a flannel or a towel) over and over, but he doubted she could hear him banging on the door and shouting.

"Ino, open the door! Now!" He smashed his shoulder sideways against the wood, splintering it slightly. The smaller pieces stuck in his clothes, occasionally catching his skin, but that didn't stop him. Hell, nothing could stop him then. His effortless reputation, his normal lack of care, anything. She was hurting herself, and by hurting herself she was destroying others. Especially him. She was tearing him apart, and she acted like she didn't even know it. He wasn't sure if it was insanity, or if this life had finally got to her, but he was almost close to thinking it was neither. Stories had been spread about what she had done for the last mission that she went on with Naruto and Kiba. He had been called in early enough to know the truth, but he wasn't sure he wanted to. Because sometimes, in gossip, the things said could be close enough to the damning truth that it was sickening. Especially in this case. God, she should have known to stick to Team Ten. Chouji and Ino stopped her from doing most things which she believed she needed to in order to protect her home. What a shame that Naruto and Kiba couldn't manage to carry out the same task.

"Still dirty!" Ino screeched, and the frantic sounds became louder. He banged on the door even more, slamming all he could into it, trying to force it open as best he could. Ino wasn't helping the situation. He slumped against the door, burying his head into his knees and forcing himself not to sob. One time he left her, and something like this happened. He had never really questioned what would happen if he was not there to protect her. Sure, he worried about her, but Ino was in a league of her own when it came to getting out of tricky situations. Something always came along and saved her when she couldn't do it herself. Plus, he had trusted Naruto and Kiba to stop at nothing to help her. They had known her long enough, and they did. The problem was that they just weren't fast enough. He didn't know what to do. This situation should never have come into reality. It should never have even existed. But it did, and nothing could change that. The door slid open behind him, and he hit the wet floor with a smack. His black shirt soaked, his hair swimming in water, he stared at the woman sitting across the floor in only a towel; staring at him silently, her legs curled in, knees under her chin, hair plastered to her scalp and skin. Her toes were caught in her fingers, making her look oddly like a terrified child.

"Clean. Beautiful and clean." He whispered to her, staring across as he lay on the floor. Her skin had been scrubbed so roughly that she had made it raw and red, a strong contrast from the normal paleness he had grown used to. The sponge slipping out of the overflowing bath was stained orange, bright and cheerfully coloured despite the terrible time for it. Such a lovely warm colour that had created something so opposite to that feeling. He decided he didn't like orange very much. In fact, he could safely say he hated it. Strange how the colour was so close to red, which he liked on her so very much, despite how pained she looked right at that moment. Very odd indeed.

"I can't be. No, no. Never clean again." Ino whispered, clinging even more tightly to her toes. Slipping up from the wet floor to his knees, he pushed himself towards her slowly. She stared at him, big blue eyes questioning what was happening. She got her answer when his arms wound around her, gently removing the towel. She didn't argue. Didn't bother. She didn't have the energy anymore, probably. He knew that. So she just sat there, red and raw and naked, right before his eyes.

"Ino, you've never looked more clean to me." He told her, placing a soft kiss on her forehead before wrapping the towel around her again carefully. Her head flopped against his chest, and for the first time in a long time, Ino sobbed for herself. Not for Asuma, or Kurenai, or Sakura, or Chouji or Shikamaru. Just for herself.

"How can I be beautiful and clean when I look so ruined and feel so dirty?" She asked him. He picked her up, slinging her limp form over his back and walking slowly towards her bedroom. He dressed her carefully in an oversized shirt she had borrowed from him years ago and kept because she liked the smell, and fluffed up her pillows and put her to sleep. Although she had suffered so much, although her suffering was his and it was driving him mad that he didn't get to be the one to kill the guy that did that to her, he couldn't call it troublesome. He couldn't find a word for it at all apart from love. The next morning, her skin was ghostly pale again, and things were almost back to normal. But the memories remained.

So did the beautiful red feelings.

* * *

Red.

The five year old girl, easily given ideas, stared up at her mother. She was wearing shocking heels, bright and cheerful to match her glossy smile and the colour she had made her hair. Her dress matched, the same colour as her painted nails and skin in the cold. Red. Red and beautiful. The girl had opened her mouth that day, stunned, because her mother was so gorgeous at the time. She'd died later that week. But she'd died beautiful, and the rain had washed away her favoured colour that painted her skin. That was what Ino's father had said, when Ino questioned why her mother wasn't messy or wearing red.

Yet here she was, twenty on and at twenty five years old she still barely remembered anything about that memory but the colour and how beautiful her mother looked in it. She fiddled nervously with the hem of her dress with a mangled hand, noticing Shikamaru approaching her, his feet racing across the dirt and grass. She knew he hated the colour red, but she didn't really know what else to wear. She thought that the outfit she had on looked best, for this mission. Shikamaru stopped, staring at her outfit. He could have cried. He could have laughed. He didn't know what else to do. Never did, with her. She'd once told him once she was twenty-five, she would no longer wear red heels. She threw the red lipstick pot out of her window, yet her lips were still perfectly coated in red. Her skin was pale, and only covered in flecks of red blood that wasn't hers. Yet, even still clinging to the damned colour, she looked beautiful.

"I love you."

* * *

Seems like Shikamaru to find an inappropriate time to tell Ino he loves her. The ending is ambiguous again, but hey. I'm leaning towards a happier end, eh? Roll with it when making your decision, it'll make me smile.

Reviews are loved. :)


	20. The Seeker

Summary: _Just for one night. Just for one day. Just for one eternity._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: This idea literally slapped me in the face and demanded that it was created as soon as possible.

Now,** Theme Twenty: The Road Home.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Seeker_**

* * *

"Home."

Ino said it plainly. Shikamaru hadn't exactly known what she was on about. But her serious look was enough to know not to argue, because she rarely wore it and the moments when she actually meant something she said were rare. He'd learned to savour them. She looked to him with her anything but calm blue eyes, staring and waiting for his approval blankly. He nodded. She began again.

"I mean, I've heard it's said that home is where the heart is." She continued, and finally it clicked in the depths of his mind. He sat up, pushing himself away from the chlorophyll colouring of the grass and the deep brown earth. She wanted him to explain, he supposed. He breathed in deeply. He had a feeling that it was going to be a very long afternoon. The golden sun was already lowering in the sky, and the clouds he had been watching were beginning to conveniently disappear, being replaced with the small glimmer of stars which were just about becoming visible at the time. He smiled in a very Asuma-like way, ready to endow her with the usually absent wisdom he knew she possessed really, even if she really showed it, knowing that she would remember his words. She remembered lots of things people said, for she took them to heart. That was why he was certain if he explained it then, it would save him more effort later.

"Where is your heart, then?" He asked, glancing at her. He knew what to suspect as an answer. Ino prided herself on three things. One: being beautiful. Two: caring for her team mates in a way only she could manage, otherwise known as 'tough love' as codenamed by Asuma when they were twelve to avoid her fury. Three: being a kunoichi of the Leaf, who nobody (especially not Sakura) would ever be allowed to defeat for she lived to protect those in the place she often flippantly referred to as her home. That was, in essence, what made Ino who she was. She didn't fail to reply with exactly what he had expected.

"With Konoha. In the forests made by the First, the waters created by the Second, in the 'Will of Fire' from the Third, in the sacrifice of the Fourth and in the caring of the Fifth. Perhaps even in the legend that is Naruto, who probably is going to end up the Sixth, the way he's going." Ino grinned, her fingers making their way to her weapon pouch without much thought. She didn't just use it to keep shuriken and kunai in order, or even to hold bandages just in case. Her headband was kept in there, a symbol of who she belonged to. Or rather, where she belonged to. She didn't wear it with pride, flashing the symbol at anyone she passed. She didn't need to prove herself. She played with flowers, but knew that most ninja found most joy in more significant and harmful things. She trained with her Team, although they had not been on a mission together in months. She held on to what she had, and learned to make something better of it. She loved, but not to be loved. Simply to show she cared. She carried herself as a kunoichi of Konoha through her actions, and as a kunoichi of Konoha she loved and protected what she called her home which was the most important thing. To her, that was all there was to it. No doubt in her mind. No questions asked.

"Is there nothing you love more than Konoha?" Shikamaru asked, glancing at her. She didn't even think about it before she answered, that much was for certain. He could tell it from her unchanged look.

"I am a kunoichi. I will give it my life, and I will die for it. Of course I cannot love anything more than it. That would make my loyalty highly questionable." She replied with simple words, carved into her head by academy teachers at a young age. They had stuck with her. It was the nice way of telling the brutal truth. As a ninja, you lived and died for your country. You loved only your country. You did not question orders. He knew she would come out with that brainwashed rubbish.

"So let's think of a hypothetical situation. Chouji, Kurenai and I have been taken captive. We have no way of escaping." Shikamaru began to explain his idea. Ino snorted in a unladylike fashion, raising both thin blonde eyebrows at him with apparent disbelief.

"This couldn't happen, even hypothetically. You'd always find a way out." Ino waved a hand airily. Well, wasn't she astute. He gave her a filthy look, despite being slightly pleased by the knowledge that she had so much faith in him despite calling him lazy and useless on a regular basis. Her praise was rare, and even if it was a small piece of recognition that he was intelligent, he liked it. He'd take it, because if he left it he knew he wouldn't receive any better. Well, not in their time, at least, but perhaps in the next century. In another life. Maybe. Doubtfully.

"Fine, be difficult. Say that Kurenai was captured whilst still pregnant by dangerous enemies, and could not fight back. Chouji and I are unable to do anything about it, for we were out of town and by the time we got back it would already be too late. For the exchange of Kurenai, her kidnappers asked for you to leave Konoha and join them. You would become a traitor to Konoha if you did so. What would you do then? Let whatever remains of Asuma be killed?" Shikamaru questioned. Ino blinked, looking down at her hands. Her fingers linked to one another, then curled away once more before repeating the process. She didn't know how to reply, was the honest truth. He knew that much.

"So you're saying my heart shouldn't belong to Konoha, but to something else?" She asked quietly, obviously not quite sure what to do with herself. She had grown up following Konoha, just as her family had always done. Her family (just like the Nara and Akimichi families) went back to the time of the First Hokage. They had been traveling fortune tellers with strange gifts for seeing the future and reading minds, once. Konoha became the first place they could settle, their oddities accepted and finally developed into the family mind transfer and body transfer techniques. That was what Inoichi had told them all when they were young. Her family felt like they owed something to Konoha, and they had for quite some time. Asking her to question that must have been odd, really. Then again, he had questioned it, and he was pretty certain until his family were accepted in Konoha the only ones who outstretched a hand to those who lived in the darkness were the once rich and powerful Akimichis. In all that time, Ino had been the only female of an InoShikaChou team, however. Maybe it was time to break old traditions, and form new ones. Maybe that had been the thing to make him consider the possibility that they were always supposed to be together. Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji. Shikamaru and Chouji. Chouji and Ino. Ino and Shikamaru. Despite anything. Despite Konoha, even.

"If home is where the heart is, yes. Some things are more important than Konoha." He said, despite knowing that was against the 'to be completely unquestioned loyalty' attitude he was supposed to have as a shinobi. Ino looked slightly shocked, but she nodded. She seemed to understand.

"So the question becomes where my heart is. How can I know?" She muttered, pulling up clumps of dirt along with the grass she was beginning to tear from the ground where she was trying to distract herself. She had never been good at that. She always had too big a mouth, too kind a heart and was too caring for everything around her. Even the underdogs and the losers, despite what she said. Team mates were friends, and friendships lasted lifetimes to the Yamanakas. They were better than any treasure. Untouchable, unchangeable. As long as nobody questioned their pride and loyalty, everything would forever fit into place just as it had always done. Just as it was always supposed to do.

"You don't even think about the answer. It just comes." He said in a sage-like manner, sounding wise. But he should have known better than to say something like that. Ino very rarely did not question everything he said, and she took advantage of a conversation when it was going in a direction to her favour. Her eyes glinted maliciously for a moment. She was a cat with a mouse trapped between the claws it could use to kill or spare, and with him as her prey he could never remember her taking the latter option.

"Where is your heart then, Shikamaru?" She asked. He did just as he said he would, before he realised the words had even slipped out of his mouth unintentionally. It was an accident. A severe mistake, and he would take it all back if he could. Right back to the start, and make sure that she never mentioned the word home and he never accidentally told her the very thing he had avoided for three years. It wasn't a love confession, it wasn't three words that she was never supposed to hear. But it was enough.

"With you."

* * *

"House?"

Shikamaru said his question without really thinking about it. Ino's hair was sticking messily out of her usually impeccable ponytail, and her makeup was smudged in various places, even if only a little. Her clothes were crumpled, and their was a bruise on her neck. She grinned at him weakly, then sheepishly ran a hand through the ends of her long cornfield coloured strands.

"The Hyuga freaks never really liked me. I went with yesterday Hinata, explained your theory of what a home is from two weeks ago, if you remember it. Neji got a bit defensive, we had a little spar of sorts, and I told him he could not possibly understand what a home was when he only lived in a house. He doesn't like being told he's wrong, does he?" She looked as though she regretted her words, and tried to redirect the conversation to something less reminding of the fact that she had probably just about dropped an atomic bomb in terms of mood for Neji and made him lose his temper beyond reasonable belief. He frowned at her.

"What did you mean by that?" He muttered, pulling her inside his house. People were staring at the bruised and battered girl on his doorstep as they passed. Most of them faces he could recognise from some place or other. One was the man next door who always kept a basket of peaches for his father after they had helped cure his daughter using their medical records, another was the old lady who lived down the road and often helped his mother feed the deer. Point was, it just didn't look good because Ino looked insane and she sounded as though she were rambling a little. His mother would not be happy to hear the one she often lied to the extended Nara family and her neighbours about was her gorgeous soon to be daughter-in-law, apparently quite the catch for Shikamaru, not just the girl who was on his Team and he happened to like rather a lot, had turned up on the doorstep looking like she had been through a rather rough time lately. As much as she and his mother got on, he doubted Ino would be pleased if she found out about the absolute rubbish the older woman came out with, let alone go along with it. Luckily, she hadn't quite caught on yet.

"A house is made of paper walls, wooden beams and your family lives there. A home is where you long to be, and you can tell at a glance that a ton of the newest Hyuga generations hate that compound. Excluding Hanabi, but I suppose she has to like it as the favourite." Ino stated as she crashed into his sofa. He'd left a blanket on it, and she curled it around herself like a protective cocoon. He couldn't say he was waiting for the butterfly to emerge, but he was pretty sure if Neji knew she was there he'd be there waiting to crush the fragile creature as it emerged. She never did learn when to shut her mouth. That much was obvious.

"Whilst I agree that the Hyuga people aren't exactly in a good relationship, they're still a family. If a very dysfunctional one. Neji has grown up with that, so it's only natural he defends his house. You should have known better than to mention stuff like that in front of him." Shikamaru scolded, as though she were a young child. She whined as he came and sat on her legs, wriggling and writhing beneath his weight until she was just about next to him. She uncovered her face, staring at him intently.

"I just want Neji to be happy. Maybe it would be good for him to be at home wherever he found himself. That would be a pretty useful wish to grant, in case anyone with the power to grant wishes like that is listening." She beamed at him. He got the hint straight away, then frowned at her deeply. His dark brown eyes stared at her as if she were absolutely insane. Which she probably was, if she wanted him to involve himself with the Hyugas. That was just like signing up for suicide, if Neji was still fuming.

"No." Shikamaru deadpanned, giving her a flat out answer. She groaned, wriggling towards him and resting her chin on his shoulder awkwardly. She blinked, her long eyelashes being used to full effect with her irresistible big blue eyes. Well, normally irresistible. He wasn't keen on dying. Nothing was going to get him to go and see Neji at that moment, unless she suddenly gave him a reason to need a death wish.

"What happened to the lovely sentimental Shikamaru, who's heart is with me?" She whined. He glared at her, prepared to tell her the flat out lie he had been thinking about just in case she mentioned it. He knew she'd try and use his words against him as some sort of trump card, because she'd done it before. It was probably because of her he did put effort into certain things. One of them being planning ahead. Without it, he would have become her slave a long time ago. Or personal whipping boy. It was her pick, really, and it was rarely known by anyone what Ino would come out with next.

"I didn't mean it like that. I meant it like, as in with you and Chouji. Team Ten." Shikamaru carefully watched his words, editing the truth without ease. It was obvious that he was lying, that much was for certain. Or maybe it was just obvious to him. Either way, it had the desired effect. Ino slid away, back into the comfy sofa, still tangled up inside the blanket. She didn't look happy about his answer at all. Oh, that had to just be him imagining things. Ino didn't care if he payed attention to her or not in the slightest.

"But it's hard to know what a home is like if you've never had one. I want to help Neji, but he wants me dead about now when I am only trying to do something for his own benefit." Ino justified her actions with a dramatic roll of her eyes, her bottom lip jutting out childishly. He nodded.

"You can't help everyone, Ino. Konoha is your home, you said, and that means if we go to war you will have to destroy the homes of others. Their countries. Their versions of Konoha." Shikamaru muttered. Ino frowned at him, her mood seeming to have considerably darkened. She gave him the filthiest look she could muster before uncurling herself from the blanket, and throwing it over him instead in an act of rage. Not that he could complain, it was still warm. So much for that.

"My home is where my heart is." Ino stated, as though it were a firm fact. Unchangeable, despite anything. He nodded, thinking before opening his mouth to speak once more. He reached out a hand, combing through the tangled ends of her ponytails before saying a word. Although he rebuked what she had said, he cared for her, and that would calm her down and make her think less about answering and more about what really mattered to her more than just doing what she was supposed to, as a protector of the place she called 'home' but could never really justify the name for.

"Where is your heart then, Ino?" He asked. She must of thought about it, because her words didn't come from her mouth automatically but they came with ease. They were cautious and cared for, ran through her mind before they left her lips loosely but sounded as though they weren't really planned out. She didn't want them too mean too much. She rarely liked to let anybody know she cared even when she really did, and he was no exception. Ino translated through actions, not words. That lesson was one he had learned a long time ago. But it didn't prepare him for her answer. It was too frank. Too carefree.

"I don't know."

* * *

"Home?"

The guy in the fox mask stared at the ponytailed woman standing next to him, questioning what she meant by that. Behind her own mask, she allowed herself a single small smile. He turned to look at him, and though she knew that he could not see her cornflower blue eyes through the slits she stared directly where his eyes were, knowing that she has just found another one like herself. Another person who was lost.

"I can't say that I know where it is, but I know I'm going there." Ino told him calmly, turning and looking at the open Konoha gates that were in front of her. The largest of her companions (who she was pretty sure was an Akimichi, though most likely not Chouji because his voice did not sound the same) was staring at her back. She could feel his eyes lingering before he even spoke his mind.

"As a kunoichi, your home is Konoha." She turned to the man in the ram mask, ready to speak. She never had the chance. The final member of the group spoke up for her. His hair was slicked back and just a tad longer than shoulder length. He wore a deer mask, and used typical Nara techniques. She had a sneaking suspicion that it was Shikamaru, but knew better than to ask. She had yet to see him with a red swirly tattoo carved into his arm, and she had been hiding hers. She really hoped that it wasn't him, that he hadn't recognised her. Because if it was him and he had, he'd know she had lied to him about taking the entrance test. But then again, he would also have lied to her and been her competition at the time. She didn't know whether to be more angry with him or herself for that, if she did find out it was him. Or to forgive him. Or cry. She never really did know with Shikamaru anymore.

"Home is where the heart is. Not where allegiance lies." The man stated for her, yawning dismissively. The man in the ram mask rounded on them, his shoulders squaring as he sized up the situation. He was in ANBU, sure, but he wasn't that strong. He couldn't take both of them. Instinctively, the one she had not quite certainly identified as Shikamaru moved in front of her quickly as the other male began to move towards her, towering over him by a few feet. A brilliant strategist and fighter, the violent Team Captain who had terrifying torture techniques, and their third member in the fox mask had some techniques which she could only recall belonging to the almost legendary Uzumaki Naruto. He must of known he stood no chance, for he backed down instantly. The cold silence hung between them, until it was broken once again just before they entered the village once more through the South gates.

"Fights don't determine who is right, Ino. They just show who's left after the bloodshed, who is the most brutal. Who can dare to think differently. Who can kill so they can go to whatever is left of their home." Naruto revealed his face, whipping off his mask quickly. The ram had already disappeared, for which Ino was thankful. Naruto looked pained, and she doubted he needed that sneering fool. She would personally see to it that he was dismissed, or at least never put in a Team with her again. What a ignorant fool, to think all that came from text books and teachers was correct when his own ideas would have shown otherwise and enriched him a little more.

"Where is your heart, Naruto?" Ino whispered, still not daring to take off her own. The porcelain was cool against her feverish skin, calming her down and stopping her from acting too swiftly. Her voice still cracked though. Naruto was always cheerful. Always beaming and sunny. Always too bright to be real, almost. But there he was, looking smashed to pieces and somehow it felt like she couldn't do anything to change it. Being lost was a difficult thing, because it was hard to find anything in darkness. His lip quivered.

"Lost on the road home, along with Sakura." He croaked, collapsing into her. He wasn't tired or underfed. Ino took care to make sure that her Team were always well. But not all things that made people ill came along due to lack of sleep or malnourishment. Sometimes, things that made you ill were simply things that were just too broken to be fixed ever again. She looked to the man with the slicked back hair, and in that instant she just knew it was Shikamaru and she knew that for then, it just didn't matter. She nodded to him. He moved over silently, flinging the other male over his back and beginning to make his way to her house.

"You know that I could use somebody, too." Shikamaru said as she pulled the sheets over Naruto, and flung her mask to the floor, suddenly disgusted with it. She knew that ANBU was never going to be the best job she ever had (although it payed well), she knew that some of the things you had to do were horrific and she knew that sometimes being a part of that sort of elite, tight-knit madness could make people even more unstable than they were before. But never once, she had thought that the instability could ever be caused by Team leaders. Yet she had opened her mouth, said a few words, and that was all it took to trigger a painful memory of her best friend. She grabbed Shikamaru desperately, seeking the answer that had been before her eyes the entire time.

"Someone like me?" She looked up at him, grabbing his standard greyish vest in tight balls in both of her hands, then gently peeled the mask from his face and dropped it next to hers. She pushed herself upwards unto the tips of her toes, and pushed her lips against his. Shikamaru retaliated, fighting back just as fiercely. His hungry eyes consumed her figure, his greedy hands untying her hair, and his teeth biting animally at her neck soon after. She shoved him out into the lounge, to her sofa before pulling away and flinging herself into a sitting position on the floor. She stared at him.

"So, where do we go from here?" Shikamaru asked. She crawled upwards again, curling into him like a cat, letting him hold her close, knees crossed on the red fabric, all the time wondering why exactly she had never realised it before. She buried her head into his chest, staring at her knees drawing close to her face as his limbs wound around her smaller form, enclosing her warmth and safety.

"Where we've been all along with each other." Ino muttered, eyes fluttering softly. She was tired too. It had taken an idiot to trigger this, Naruto to make things click together and her to take the initiative because Shikamaru never clearly quite knew how to handle it, yet alone how to put things into the words he really meant. Their lives so far had been long journeys along the road home; where they had stopped and searched every nook and cranny, every wide open plain and fields filled only by rusted old weapons of war, seduced by each hint at getting closer to somewhere to rest. Seeking solace, seeking home, seeking somewhere to be just who they were. Together. Just for one night. Just for one day. Just for one eternity. Shikamaru smiled.

"Home."

* * *

The search to find home is important to me. I suppose it is to many people, but I suppose for me it is mainly because I would like to be at home wherever I am. It would be a nice thing. Now two thirds of the way through, ten more to go.

Reviews are loved. :)


	21. The Shadows

Summary: _I should have kissed you whilst that village was burning down._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: My laptop is dead. Like, actually deceased. Decrypt. Lost to the ages. Hence I am using the home computer, which I rarely do. This is terrible! Also, this chapter is extremely dark.

Bringing you **Theme Twenty-one: violence; pillage/plunder; extortion.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Shadows_**

* * *

Yamanaka Ino believed in a perfect world.

She liked to think that things came easy, that much work wasn't needed to make things right. That justice was as it was, and it poured itself into one collective force against those who did wrong. Words made lies, but in all lies was a hint of truth and that was always good enough, despite what anyone else said. Beauty made things simple in even the oddest ways, like a little smile from an old lady and a small thank you from her husband for help that made the world seem just a little brighter because they were so pretty. She believed in basic gestures like giving flowers and not telling the meanings behind them, watching stars and clouds with an open mind waiting for them to show her what made them so breathtaking, and helping the underdogs when things were as rough as they could possibly get. She was too kind hearted, he had decided after many years. Too trusting and nice. She gave and took as she was offered, and though she preferred to give she often received things she did not want for that very reason. She took the gifts of hate and pain she was forced to accept, and changed them into something else. Something good. Because she didn't believe in darkness, she didn't believe in monsters, and there was something right in every wrong in her eyes.

That was why she was well liked by various men of his age. She was the person who smiled at Uzumaki Naruto after she found out he held a demon inside, because she didn't think it mattered at all. She was the person who gave Uchiha Sasuke warmth despite his actions when he returned, probably the one he ended up regretting ever leaving behind. She was the person who taught Sai to really smile, teaching him about learning by emotions instead of learning by books. She was the person who laughed at Hyuga Neji when he gave her orders to stay where she was so he could go by himself, then completely ignored him and so ended up saving his life. She was the person who gave Rock Lee beautiful (and youthful) lotus flowers every time he entered her father's shop without charge, despite the consequences because she liked seeing his childlike face light up with joy. She was the person who saved refugee bugs for Aburame Shino, taking them from her shop and leaving them outside his house in containers with a playful note stating that he needed to make sure they didn't run into her pesticides (not that Shino probably found the joke very funny) with a grin on her face even if his reaction wasn't probably the best one every single time. She was the person who fed Inuzuka Kiba's pet Akamaru doggie biscuits, even after his family had banned the tattooed boy from feeding them to the dog himself and just giggled at the consequences when a haughty sister of his told her off. She was the person who Sabaku no Gaara had an affinity to, if only because she was the first one who flat out refused to call him Kazekage-sama like every other girl did around the time he earned the title. She was the person who painted flowers on Sabaku no Kankuro with his purple 'make up', then let him draw over her arms which eventually resulted in a rather messy paint fight which ended in purple blotches not removing from their skin for weeks.

She was also liked by the girls, even if not in a sort of fleeting romantic way. She was the person who Haruno Sakura had to live up too; giving her a reason to carry on fighting even after their rivalry had long disappeared to be replaced with a once again friendly bond. She was the person who found the little things that Tenten left behind in the morning when she just happened to be passing through the training grounds, returning them with a small grin. She was the person who made Hyuga Hinata smile with just a little bit more confidence, telling her to let the world see her beautiful grin like they had never seen in before. She was the person who called Sabaku no Temari pretty, then took her shopping because she dressed a little oddly and when she wore the clothes Ino picked out the purple-clad woman knew that everyone would stare at her beauty.

She was even liked by the teachers. She was the person who Hatake Kakashi laughed at, because he thought she was weak and pathetic (not that he told her) but it didn't matter because she stuck with her team mates no matter what and he wished he had always done that. She was the person who Gai called youthful, for making Lee so delighted that he proclaimed her to be that very thing and he knew youthful people were never bad so of course she couldn't do any wrong in his eyes. She was the person who went to see Yuuhi Kurenai three times a week for lunch, watching over the pregnant woman carefully and doing all she could to help her although Kurenai often thought she did too much for her.

Most of all, she wasn't just liked by her team. She was loved by them. To Sarutobi Asuma she was the person who had given comfort, because he thought that even with three students with perfect teamwork had a tough time ready to hit them but when she first began to care for them he knew he didn't have to worry. She was capable of anything, if she could be bothered to put her mind to it, and that made everything just a little better. Despite the fact that she was the only person who could get away with calling Akimichi Chouji fat, she did really care about him and when he was sitting their in hospital years ago she had taken food to him everyday because she was so terrified of his bony body and because she wanted him to be healthy again, even if for him that meant being on the slightly rounder side.

But to Shikamaru? Well, he was a boy, and he was on her team. She was the person who watched clouds with him when he didn't want her to, annoying him to no end. To him, she was possibly the most aggravating woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet. She put flowers in his hair when he fell asleep, made him make the effort to get up to see her every morning (because Chouji didn't count, seeing as he would get up for him anyway and he couldn't blame Chouji for anything) and the one who he felt was possibly the most troublesome woman alive. Which of course, his father had chuckled at, saying Nara men were cursed to love the most troublesome women no matter what they wanted and he had better learn to run fast because Inoichi would want him dead when the time came. Apparently, he'd had the average dream too, and every other Nara before that had. Shikamaru told him he'd break the tradition, because he couldn't possibly learn to love that thing he was stuck with. But even so, he hadn't been able to deny he had a soft spot for her. Not that he'd tell her that.

So he'd been surprised when she (of all the damn people) had turned up at the village gate saying she'd just snapped the neck of a man she was pretty sure she wasn't actually her target with her bare hands and expecting him to help. Sure, she could be violent and she had a tendency to rely on him, but it seemed out of characters for her to do something so very wrong until he saw it. He looked in her eyes, and saw the glimmer had faded away. The amusement with the smaller things. The acceptance she radiated. He'd only noticed her actions. Never what she looked like, not on the inside and it was then he realised that she'd lost her outlook. She'd realised things didn't come easy, she'd began to only see in black and right and right and wrong, she'd lost the part of her that saw beauty in everything, come to notice no matter what gestures she made they all amounted to nothing, and the gifts she had been given had finally broken through her skin and crawled into her heart and robbed her of who she had always been. Because she knew the darkness, she could see monsters lurking all around her in the hearts of others, and there was no longer right in every wrong because she couldn't find excuses for the world and all those who inhabited it any longer.

His father had once told him something he said would be important. _Shadows will always surround us,_ he had said_, but they will never pull us under. Not us,_ then with a dark look he had added _just everything else. They will pull up the nails that hold down everything you own, _then _and you won't be able to do damn thing to stop it because it's so damn beautiful. _Shikamaru had frowned, finally seeing it. _Shadows control everything, _and _we can't help it, can we? We love the shadows, and so we love ugliness. _

"We can't help but love imperfection." Shikamaru repeated.

Neither could Ino.

* * *

Chouji broke first.

Because _the shadows _were_ coming for him _and he was always just as much of a dreamer as Ino. So Shikamaru looked down at the butterfly boy, beautiful and bloated and bloody and broken and says nothing. Because what could he say? He knew it was going to happen, knew he was going to _slither and slip and slide into the shadows_ and _die. _Because that's what shadows do. They retreat and hide until they see the right time to fight, and Chouji had always been his shadow. Had always been _hiding _behind him, always _second and a silhouette _that watched from the wings before his magnificent performance. The world had been cruel to him. It had battered him. It had ripped off his wings entirely with a few pills and a few words and silly beautiful _ugly_ people who made him see how beautiful _ugly _the world was under the shiny surface it showed around. He wondered if it had always been that way, or if the people made it like this. Either way it made sense. But Ino chose for both of them.

She took all that she could from the village. She acted as a bandit, except rather than taking material things, she takes everything else. She took the shinobi that killed Chouji and _showed them the world as it is_ by taking away everything they had and then _saving them_ with a quick and messy death. It only took a sword. She took the people that condoned it, their council, and nobody could stop her from slashing all their lives to pieces. She took the men of the village and broke every heart that she could, driving them to suicide over a week or to kill each other and the jealous women and pregnant wives waiting patiently for their return. The men that survive she let him mess with, making them steal from each other and turn against each other until there were none left. The women that survived, no matter what state they are in, Ino tortured. The children? She let them run, and those who didn't burned down along with the twigs that held their homes together by sunset on the seventh day. They'd done it all in disguise, _all from the shadows_, and it was easy. Easier than either of them expected.

"I looked down on my creation, and saw that it was good." Ino whispered, watching the town burn to ashes as he stroked Chouji's pale face. His open eyes stared up beseechingly, asking the justice of this madness, because all shinobi were supposed to die. All people were supposed to die. But not like this. They'd murdered him; _the shadows did it,_ _just as they murdered this village. _Shikamaru saw the justice. He saw what the shadows had created, and he too thought that his creation was good.

He and Ino had created a bright burning light in the darkness on the village, _on the face of the void,_ and they blazed to proclaim their majesty. They had raised a new home in their glory. So he had taken the last remaining child, and left it there with a look at the village.

"I will raise a creature in my image to have dominion over all things, to be my light in this darkness." The flames of the village burned in the child's eyes, ready and waiting to be released. He trembled and shook and hid from the eyes of Ino, but as he sat she dragged him to his feet and pointed to the forest that was probably to his eyes fairly far away. Her demanding look set on him, she stared down at what she created with a thin smile.

"Run." So the child did so, ready to bring darkness on all that he would thirst for until he was ready. They had created a child, just like them. One who saw the shadows, but one who could live in them like they could not. One day, they might have to send something to cleanse what they had created. Shikamaru knew that. The shadows would want it gone, if it tried to control them for itself. But he didn't care. When his last judgement came, he knew that he would protect that child even if it meant taking away the free will of what only he knew how to use.

When they returned home, their mission report was perfect. It didn't include what they had done. They shed no tears at the funeral, and a craftsman carved Chouji's name into the stone instead of either of them. Chouza mourned, Inoichi mourned and the rest of the twelve rookie shinobi mourned. Shikato, his father, just looked at them and said nothing. Because his father knew just as well as they did about the shadows and he didn't need to tell them that. But his father must have known he had began to see it in everything he was certain of that.

In dinner recipes, to follow instructions saying 'Add the chopped beans, coriander stalks and salmon to your onions and carrots _then use the shadows to sew them together!_' or on promotional posters saying 'You really can't go wrong with _shitenshin_, everyone _hates_ it! That's what makes _Ino _such a great _weapon _to have under your belt!' and even in animal rescue leaflets saying 'At any one time, we have six thousand five hundred _test subjects_ in our care! Sadly, for every _piece of waste_ we can help there are many more that we are unable to hand over to you _for your sick amusement. _Please consider giving a_ toy the torture he deserves _today and help us create more _un_happy _endings_.' He didn't know whether to be concerned or not, really. It didn't appear Ino was, so he guessed it didn't really matter. So he opened his mouth when Ino tried to cook, before saying some unnervingly calm words.

"I should have kissed you whilst that village was burning down." He muttered, burying his head into the crook of her neck. Her perfume was delicious, smelling like apples. He always thought he suited flowers and blackcurrant shampoo, but he guessed he was wrong. His nose traced up her neck softly as she continued putting the ingredients together, and he briefly realised how easy it would be to do so many things with her that vulnerable to him. _To the shadows._ He could still kiss her. _The shadows could kill her._ All in a split second. Lips, or _choke her._ Small decisions could change lives, apparently. He hadn't noticed.

"It would have been romantic." She murmured, sliding the oven gloves across the counter to put them on. He noticed the slight disdain in her tone, and edged backwards quickly before deciding to crouch down to sit on her plain white tiled floor. So like her, to pick a colour which could be dirtied so easily. She never thought all too practically, he supposed. _Just like the shadows. _Maybe that was why he could stop them from hurting her, because they didn't want to, the possible reason being because she was like them. She knew them inside out, like she was one. It wouldn't shock him if she was one, actually. His idle train of though was interrupted by the answer that came to mind.

"This isn't a love confession." He said, not quite sure just who it was he was telling. Ino nodded to herself, her blonde ponytail bobbing as she bent down to put the food inside the oven. She got it. He reached forward when she had finished, grabbing the back of her knees so that she collapsed into him with a harsh thud. He hit the floor. She didn't change position. He was probably a fairly uncomfortable chair, but it didn't seem to bother her. Didn't bother her that he could kill her either apparently, because she didn't act as though he was dangerous and she kept her back turned on him.

"It's a heartless one, though." She replied. He pulled the back of her ponytail with a gentle tug, which she ignored. She used to scream when he did that, back when they were twelve. But here she was cooking Chouji's favourite dish one last time, and sitting on him in the miniature black dress she wore to his best friend's funeral, making it the one time she had right to. She could have cried, too. Anything. He hadn't expected her not to react.

"I can't love you." He said. _Not more than the shadows do._ She finally looked around, moving to put her legs over either side of him and staring blankly at his face with something that looked nothing like hurt or anger or sympathy. She moved her hand carefully down, touching his lips softly. No repulsion or fear. He couldn't see any, and couldn't think why. This beautiful thing was very ugly underneath and he loved her for it. But she didn't belong to him.

"I know." She answered flatly. She stood up, turning on him again and cleaning up her mess. He stood up quickly, his heart racing as he grabbed her arm. She span around in a matter of seconds, her face questioning the very thing he wasn't sure he wanted her to understand. Did he? Could he possibly? Did he want to? Yes. Yes. No, because he was sure she'd get hurt, even if it wasn't her fault. The shadows couldn't talk things over. Like her, they acted violently on impulse. They didn't care who got hurt. Not even those they loved so very much. He couldn't help but remember. Chouji broke first, he'd thought that. He was wrong. He and Ino had, that first time when she was at the gate and waiting for him to fix things all over again. He'd put them back together wrongly, and whilst his repair kept things together it barely did the job it wasn't correct for them to be that way. She was so ugly right then, and Ino had always been so beautiful in so many ways. Yet just as his father had said, he couldn't say the word he wanted to. To the shadows, or to her, or to himself.

Stop.

* * *

_This wasn'__t supposed to happen._

Ino had taken it by force! His head shouted and the shadows screamed and he yelled aloud in a confusing muddle; this was overcharge, exploitation, pure extortion at best to do this to him. No, had it been Ino to take it? Had he ruined himself? He couldn't blame the shadows, they were what made him. What made them. He could hear Ino screeching too, running after him in this thunderous noise. The air crackled around him like a whip, alive with enough electricity to shock him. He didn't care. He knew right then.

It was the shadows, the shadows prevented everything. The rage surfaced in him, pouring into his bones as Ino crashed into him, taking him to the floor. They hit the mud and water together, and she didn't stop thinking it, he knew. Why had he run away? Because they controlled him. Because they controlled all of the Nara family, they always had, he couldn't defy them. But he wanted to. He'd thought stop, they'd thought stop and Ino was crying go at the top of her lungs because they both needed to feel alive.

_Shadows will always surround us,_ _but they will never pull us under. Not us,_ _just everything else. They will pull up the nails that hold down everything you own, and you won't be able to do damn thing to stop it because it's so damn beautiful. Shadows control everything, we can't help it, can we? We love the shadows, and so we love ugliness. _

Yes, they surrounded them. But they were pulling a Nara under along with everything else. They had pulled up the nails that held down everything he owned, and it was so utterly stunningly beautiful it had taken every ounce of him to say stop because he didn't want them to control everything and he could help it. Every Nara could say stop, if they damn well tried. It was just so hard. So very hard, because he needed to love them like his father did and his grandfather had and everyone else always had. He didn't love this ugliness at all. He'd thought it amazing and attractive, but that had to be them speaking. He wanted Ino back. The Ino who was silly and found pleasures in the simple things. The Ino who he had a soft spot for. The Ino who he fell in love with. Not this Ino, who he still loved despite everything, who was sitting here crying in the rain like there was no tomorrow and calling his name because she didn't know how else to reach him. He knew how to try to reach himself though. He knew how to reach her, even. It just took one thing.

He grabbed her body as she tried to shake him roughly and then smashed his lips against hers. The world went silent. The thunder stopped roaring, his head stopped screaming and both of them stopped screaming. The shadows lost the voices they used. They moulded into one another, because things really did come that easy and justice was showing what was right. Because this wasn't a lie, it was all truthful. Because this was truly beautiful. It was a flawless, basic gesture like giving flowers and watching stars or clouds and saving the underdog when they faced uncertainty. Because the shadows didn't need her. She was better than them, and he'd choose her a million times over when she was compared with them. She wasn't made for darkness, she wasn't made for monsters, and she wasn't made for wrong. She was made for him, and he was made for her. Without shadows. He breathed. He knew this was supposed to happen, even if they said it wasn't.

"I love you."

* * *

Just because it was dark, it didn't mean it wouldn't have a happy ending. But I know many people probably assumed it did not have a happy ending anyway. Assumption is an odd thing.

Reviews are loved. :)


	22. The Baby

Summary: _Flying sets you free._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Still have a lack of laptop, so I feel utterly useless as it is not only affecting my update timing but also my will to write. I miss half decent modern technology.

Going for the home run with **Theme Twenty-two: Cradle.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Baby_**

* * *

Her words were a lullaby.

"Rockabye baby, in the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock." Ino hummed softly to herself, staring at Sakura far across the table. Eight seats down the apprentice to the Godaime was running her hand through her pink hair, lips pouting and her eyes showing a clear lack of interest. Chouji's elbow shot out, prodding the girl next to him softly. She didn't make a noise of retaliation at all, instead just glaring at him before continuing to stare at the girl who was standing up. Girl, because to Ino, she still looked like she didn't have a clue what she was doing and a woman would.

"The last member of Team Bird was lost here. This would be a simple reconnaissance, but it seems we have encountered some problems. To get her back, we may have to face some harsh battles. But the information she holds is important, and we know she is alive." Sakura began, pointing to several highlighted places on the map pinned across the large board next to her. Ino noticed Shikamaru cocking an eyebrow to her side. Clearly, he had a better plan. As the best strategist in Konoha, if not in all of the nations, it was hardly surprising. It would also hardly be surprising if he decided to keep it to himself; he didn't like things to get messier than they needed to be. He was a lover of things falling into place just as they were planned.

She, on the other hand, favoured disorder. So instead of stopping him from humiliating supposedly smart Sakura, Ino leaned back in her seat to watch the chaos he created with his interjections. Missing a chance to see the pink haired girl humiliated was not her style, because she liked to be there to fix things in the end. She liked doing nice things, even if they were just reconciling what she had done or completely pointless to begin with. It gave her a vague sense of fulfilment, and made her feel as though she had won a bigger contest than just the beauty one they held. She'd lost in nearly everything else, so another victory couldn't go amiss when she was still keeping score even after such a long time.

"Surely it would be more logical for a small, more informed group to set out. Team Predator has power and intelligence, not to mention not at all bad interrogation skills. They would be perfect to sneak in and bring Sparrow back without much trouble." Shikamaru drawled, seemingly idly, much to the chagrin of boulder-breaking beast. She gritted her teeth, then let out a small hiss. Ino's eyes sparkled, and she mentally congratulated Shikamaru. She never did quite get over the joy of these moments. They made these more unwanted meetings seem just a little bit better, in her opinion. She doubted Sakura agreed. It seemed to her that his input was rarely wanted when her so-called best friend had spent time thinking up something they could do about a situation such as the one they were currently in.

"But Team Predator is loud, how would they sneak in? Separate teams would keep them quite, and have more power." Sakura stated, in a tone which practically begged for a suggestion. As a member of Team Predator, Ino supposed she should have been offended. Naruto didn't look too pleased to say the least, and Kiba was biting down on his lip to stop himself. She knew from a glance. Sai wouldn't say a thing, so she didn't bother with him. He knew how to compose himself a little too well, probably because he didn't know what an insult was with his (or rather what she had decided was his) incredibly small and inept brain. He caused all the noise to begin with, if she was honest. She did try to be kind to the bottom of her friend scale, but she had recently decided he was most likely going to end up a lost cause. In the first week of becoming Team Predator, he had almost got them all murdered through discovery due to his nonexistent aptitude of understanding a social situation.

"They're not so stupid as to not know when to shut up. Well, except maybe Tiger." Ino noticed Shikamaru neglected to add _'because he is a retard, obviously enough'_ like she would at the end of the last sentence, but she decided not to complain. Nine of ten times he'd used opportunities like that to dig at her instead, because sometimes she had far too big a mouth too. Accidentally, of course. But still, she had an aptitude for knowing when things were going to end badly, so she wasn't too threatening to the lives of her comrades. Or so she liked to think. Ino didn't like facing up to the truth too much, it stung a little to open old wounds with ugly memories. It was like rubbing salt on fresh cuts.

"Bells and whistles, Nara. Team Predator would only be a small distraction." Sakura replied, not looking at all pleased. Ino glanced at her. She was so hypocritical. Her name summoned recognition and praise, reverence. Respect. Sakura Haruno was under the spotlight, a leading character in a show, but she was not the most dangerous weapon that Konoha boasted. But in her shadow hid people much more dangerous. Look underneath the underneath as Kakashi had taught his Team, that was what she needed to learn to do. Only then would you find Team Predator. Only then you would find Ino, who wasn't made up of tricks and games. The superficially beautiful one who could tear people apart from the inside.

"Would it now, Haruno? Look at you. In your shadow, there are better things." Kiba glanced at Ino quickly before giving the icy statement. The pink haired girl looked as though she had been slapped with such force she was about to cry. Of course, she did. When everyone was gone, and only she and the blonde woman remained. She said to Ino that it wasn't fair for Shikamaru's plan to go ahead, and it wasn't fair that nobody ever cared for her anymore. Ino gave her a fake sympathetic smile, and wiped her tears. Told her that it was ok, like a good person would do. Because Ino liked to help others. When she left, Shikamaru was outside.

"So, who will take care of you when you reach the part where you fall down with your cradle?" Shikamaru asked her as she grabbed the cigarette from his hand and shoved it between her lips. A dark cloud came out that her stubborn eyes refused to water due to, and she focused her gaze on Shikamaru. He raised both eyebrows as if awaiting her response. She frowned.

"I don't need taking care of." She replied stiffly, handing the cigarette back to him. He didn't really care that it was broad daylight. Didn't really care that he had just effectively meant she was going on a too dangerous mission. Didn't really care about anything much right then. Public displays of affection were never taken lightly; he knew that, but he needed her to know. He pulled the back of her ponytail softly and she turned into his body. He captured her in his limbs like a cage, trapping her in his embrace. She attempted to squeeze through the bars, to escape the entrapment caused by his arms, but it was to no avail.

"Life in ANBU is like those shape boxes, where you have to fit everything in the right hole. You're young and you know what you're doing, but most of the pieces still won't fit. So please don't insult my intelligence by lying to me like that again." Shikamaru answered gruffly. Ino briefly wondered when he started caring like this. Normally, his attitude towards others was less than satisfactory in any event other than an emergency. She stopped down, finally setting herself free. She didn't need to be saved from anything. She was Yamanaka Ino, and Yamanaka Ino had more pride in herself than that.

"I'm not the sort of person to depend on others." Ino stated flatly. She scanned the crowd. She was pretty sure she saw Naruto going right, and Kiba going left. She could make a break for either way and probably be able to use seeing her ANBU team as a good excuse. She nodded to him quickly before fleeing right, taking to the rooftops in a desperate attempt to get away from him. It succeeded. He didn't even bother running after her, she knew that. He wasn't fast enough to catch her if he had. Chouji might have the power and he might have had the brains, but she had the speed. She knew when to take flight, too.

She caught up to Naruto after not very long, and collapsed into him softly. He seemed to understand enough. He was a reliable person, and she trusted him with her life. So he slung her on his back unceremoniously, and carried her home whilst she quietly whispered it to him for the third time that week because she didn't know what else to do. Last time, it was Kiba. Sai wouldn't understand, she had decided, and Naruto understood better than anyone what it was like to love somebody who you wanted to hate so very much.

"He cared again, today." She told him as quietly as she could manage. Naruto didn't even need to answer. His small, unpitying smile was enough. It comforted her, and didn't make her feel like she needed anything special. It made her feel like everything was still working, still holding together, and still very much safe. She liked that smile a lot. She couldn't tell him lies, she could only tell him the truth and as best as he could Naruto would answer with silence instead of telling her things he shouldn't have. It was good that way, because lying to children was a bad thing to do. He knew that well, and she had to be one of the most child-like women he had ever met. The last thing that kept him silent was the most important.

Unspoken truths couldn't hurt.

* * *

She wanted to scream it.

"When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall." Ino muttered, watching as Kiba pummelled through a paper wall. She was briefly reminded that Ibiki had once said _'__when he is best he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast' _but decided not to tell him that. The bottle of vodka by her side was beginning to lose some volume and she already felt sick enough, although that was probably not the cause. What they had done was unforgivable. She had just got here, and she already wanted to leave because of it. It was sick, sick and wrong and she wanted to hurt someone because of it. Naruto was staring at her.

"Go." Naruto told her. She knew what he was saying. Run to the man who has loved you, who loves you, and will love you. She wasn't sure she wanted to. How could she run to the one she could only barely say she knew anymore? He wasn't friend or foe. He wasn't a constant. Not like them. Sai looked at both bombshells in turn with his dark, unknowing eyes. Maybe he was the only one who wasn't retarded, Ino thought bitterly. He might not have had any emotions, but perhaps it did him some good even if he didn't understand social situations and the differences between many wrongs and rights. If she was like him, she would be better off because she wouldn't have to deal with all these things. Losing what she already had would only be a small price to pay, of that she was certain in her more miserable moments.

"Only to have him, like a whore, unpack my heart with words?" Ino muttered. No, that wasn't good enough. Shikamaru could say whatever he wanted, just like a paid escort. Happy, silly little things. His ANBU team got the easier deals, because he was the best strategist around and they needed him to stay alive. She doubted they'd ever been made to kill pregnant women. Walking around in ankle-deep placenta didn't plague their dreams. Life was good for them. So whatever he said, it meant that he wouldn't understand. Words meant nothing, and if her heart fell for them she knew there would be an even deeper silence between them. In that, she knew she would be able to hear Shikamaru's heart break. But although she really did loathe him, she knew that would be far too cruel and she couldn't face doing something else disgusting tonight. She was already filthy enough.

"We take care of you. I won't let him hurt you." Kiba murmured, pulling himself forcibly away from the mutilated wall and moving near Ino. He curled his head into her lap, the wolf mask dangling off his head staring up at her blankly. Ino stared down at it, wondering if she could ever master such a plain look. With that, nobody would question her. With that, she could look at what she had done and not look as though she was going to have a breakdown. With that, she could do so many things she found impossible at that very moment. That look would have made things so very easy. No wonder ANBU had it carved into their masks. It meant that nobody would question if they could keep clause twenty-five, as they wouldn't be able to see their faces as they carried out brutal slaughters. Those dying wouldn't have their suffering worsened by the fact the person who killed them never wanted to. They would never need to think about those things, that someone thought it for the best. That it was for the greater good. Because things weren't all black and white, most of them were just murky shades of grey and wrong or right didn't come into it anymore. It wasn't allowed to. Not for Ino.

"We're not Team Ten anymore, Naruto. We're not together." She stated, taking another swig before Kiba snatched the bottle from her hand in one quick motion. No, they weren't Team Ten anymore. Team Seven weren't themselves, and neither were Team Eight or Team Gai. They had all been pulled apart. Their hands might still have been joined; fingers gently curled around the next persons at the start, but now they were clinging with their pinkies, just a tiny bit from letting go. Their ANBU teams were all they knew now. Team Predator, Team Bird and Team Beast. That was where they belonged. Shikamaru didn't fit in with Team Predator, and not did Chouji. But when she said _'we're not together'_, none of them quite knew if she was talking about Team Ten or just Shikamaru. Because like all the best things, Team Ten was the quickest to come to an end. They lost Asuma, Shikamaru got promoted again, Ino joined interrogation and what happened to the old Chouji was something nobody every really spoke about. They all joined ANBU, got officially pulled apart. They were linked only by rumours and stories now, just as Shikamaru had always been to Ino. Nobody knew what was true, apart from them and Team Predator. All of the situations were lies. They might very well of loved each other, once. A long time ago. But their story remained unwritten.

"All that remains is broken clay pots, dirt and pieces of glass." Sai said, effectively making Ino snap. Her eyes shot blurrily upwards, staring at him coldly. Kiba growled. Naruto turned to him silently. Not one of them raised a hand to defend him when she hurled the bottle at him across the room, never really meaning to hit him. It shattered to pieces on the floor. Because yes, all of those things were still there. But Shikamaru wasn't.

"Sunflowers, you forgot the sunflowers, you stupid bas-" Ino was cut off as the door opened, shedding light on the four humans beings. Even so, they recoiled like monsters. Ino had not been foolish enough to act on a dream. But Shikamaru was standing there in plain sight at the door of the private Inuzuka backhouse, and she briefly thought he was. He shouldn't have been there, right then. He was too vulnerable to be there, under her judgemental gaze.

"Hey, Ino. I was thinking it was about time." He whispered. His words cut at her. She hated it when he cared, she truly did. It made things fit back like Team Ten again, but it couldn't be like that. No matter how much she really wanted it at times. They couldn't go back to that false sense of security, ignoring the real way that shinobi lived. They couldn't believe the fairy stories and fold a thousand paper cranes for good luck like they did at the academy, they couldn't carefully make-believe and steal Asuma's cigarettes because they weren't in Team Ten anymore and even before that Asuma was dead far too young and quick and soon, and now they'd given up lying to themselves and anything they did to get a small smile on their faces didn't work because the smiles weren't genuine. Shikamaru hated it. She knew that. But it didn't change anything.

"Yeah, cradle and all." Ino replied. Kiba nods, a small show of understanding before she stands up and sloppily still on the spot before walking to his warm embrace. Sai complained he didn't understand, Naruto looked coldly at them both and Kiba simply turned away. Because she wasn't his. Not anymore. They just didn't want to be the ones to tell him it, really. But someone had to. So Sai did the cruel, right, thing for them all.

"She's not yours anymore." He said, flat-out. Then Shikamaru dropped his arms, nodded, gave a thin lipped and genuinely sad smile then turned away. Ino grabbed the black sweater on his back a moment, stopping him. Taking him in while she could. Then she released him. Released his heart. Then he was gone again. But maybe, most likely, he'd be back. She wasn't sure he wanted him to be. Every time he came back, it made her just a little more tired. Made her want to scream and cry like a baby. Each time he left, so he wouldn't be able to hold her, so she never did. So they filled the gap with silence. Just as they always did. She tried to convince herself it was better that way. It meant that she was an adult. That she was loved.

You could only put babies in the corner.

* * *

It was Shikamaru's turn.

"Down will come baby, cradle and all." He frowned. Ino looked so innocent. She had torn through faces with her nails, which were painted pearly pink. Her large blue eyes had been emphasised by the sparkling blue gems around her neck, although he had known those beautiful staring things to lead men to their deaths. She looked good. Better than the bride, even. If there was one thing Ino had always beaten Sakura in, it was looks. Not that he could say that to her, it was Sakura's big day and by God was it big.

It was the sort of thing he would expect of a Kage, or a Lord of some distant Land. Extravagant was a word that was lost on it, for it went beyond extravagance. Sakura's dress alone terrified him when it came to the thought of cost, with the ridiculous amount of material used and the sewn in jewels she must have replaced her right arm for. Or done some ridiculous nearly impossible solo mission for anyway. Money, it seemed, was no object. His eyes lingered a moment more before he decided to make his way over to her, only to have Naruto take his place by her side without a word. He decided to carry on anyway.

"Looks beautiful, doesn't she?" Naruto said, as Shikamaru reached his side. Ino hushed her companion. Together, they could have been mistaken for siblings. Both fair-haired, with big blue eyes that struck the person they so much as glanced at. Shikamaru knew otherwise. The way Ino acted betrayed them. Her posture, the curve of her neck as she turned it and buried it into his. Everything about them read possible lovers, and it made him seethe. He wondered if he came across as the jealous older brother figure briefly, but soon dismissed the thought. He and Ino had never been like siblings in the slightest. They were the siren and the sailor.

"I don't care. I don't care for what either of you are trying to give me, I don't need it." Ino growled, flipping her unusually untied hair backwards in a haughty annoyed motion. She stormed away towards Kiba, and preoccupied herself with making small talk with him as both men stared at each other. Shikamaru supposed it should have been obvious all along really; Naruto pushing away the thing he wanted most seemed typical of him. Because Ino was something. Everything. Ino was everything. Not least between two men who she'd enchanted, and never really wanted at all. But she wasn't going back to either of them soon. That was the thing with Ino. She made sure fights got too ugly to withstand quietly.

"It's not personal, Shikamaru." Naruto said, cutting the silence between them. Shikamaru drew a cigarette from is pocket and lit it, taking a deep drag and closing his eyes. He needed to stop this insane obsession with fixing the thing which was not broken. Ino wasn't a baby. She wasn't his baby, anyway. She had made that very clear, and now he regretted ever using the damn phrase. She wouldn't be the way she was if he hadn't. A million faces and one person, with twisted words and hurtful dreams and who cried herself to sleep at night.

"Friendship is not personal. Especially your kind." Shikamaru replied. A typical shinobi answer. He was no fairytale prince with beautiful _dead_ eyes, a hopeful _lying_ smile, and gorgeous _obnoxious_ laugh. He'd not been read fairytales like Ino had, and not had he read them to himself like Naruto. That was what set him apart from them, and it was the reason Ino needed him so much even if she refused to accept it. Her life was not perfect, no matter how much she wanted it to be, and he could deal with that. As long as she didn't ever turn him away. He never _ever after_ wanted to stop caring.

Happy ending or not.

* * *

For once, she wasn't singing.

Another first was that he refused to do it for her. Naruto had carried her in, cradled in his arms protectively. Because Naruto wasn't a damned Prince either. He couldn't save her. Shikamaru raised one hand and stroked the bone in her neck, a curved line He briefly wondered if their lives were curved together, if only barely.

But then he took her in his arms from the second blonde and held her, cradling her like a baby and knowing everything about her just as he had all along. Because he didn't know what else to do. Because they were already damned. Because she was Ino, his Ino, and she was smashed to pieces and it was glorious because he knew what each and every one of them looked like. He knew her better than she knew herself. That was enough.

"Why did you climb the tree to begin with, baby?" He muttered. She cooed in his arms, rolling her face into his chest and speaking warmly against his mesh covered skin.

"I needed to find a place I could fly from." She replied. She should have known humans didn't have wings. Whatever made them disallowed it. Wings were for flying away when you couldn't run, and people like her needed to stay grounded. If she left, there would be nothing worth living for. She needed to stay tied down.

"Or fall from." Shikamaru said. Ino laughed quietly. She never expected him to understand, he supposed. He knew he couldn't. They lived too differently.

"Flying sets you free." She stated, as though it were a fact to be revered. He looked down at her before making his way up the stairs. He slid the door open and dropped her unceremoniously on her bed, where she cawed madly. He picked up the salve and bandages from his table and carefully began to treat her injuries. It wasn't like her to get even a scratch.

"Falling means you will be caught again." He said calmly. Ino moved quickly. Their lips instantly crashed together, the taste of green tea and peppermint clashing furiously. But it was fine. He didn't care. Neither did she. She pulled away just as fast, grinning madly before she collapsed back into his bed and gave him a reply.

"If it's you who catches me, it's fine."

* * *

Most people probably will not understand this. Look underneath the underneath of the underneath, and maybe you will find get it. I have to admit, it is a bit strange.

Reviews are loved.


	23. The Living

Summary: _A hundred and one times, over and over. One thing that he didn't really mean._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: The Sakuracon 2009 advert is actually hilarious. Seriously, I don't even live in America and I find it humiliating for all those who actually do live there. Poor them.

The fast track with **Theme Twenty-Three: Candy.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Living_**

* * *

It started on a Monday.

Sometimes, Shikamaru wondered if he was just faking everything. At times, when he kissed his parents on their cheeks and told them he was going and that he'd be back in a while or when he smiled at Temari and told her that everything was fine. Or when Shiho asked when he'd really be back, and he'd just answer with a shrug when he really knew it wouldn't be soon because he was sick of seeing them all. When Naruto asked if why he liked watching clouds and he lied saying that it was because of the blue eyes on his team mate he had always secretly admired. With Chouji when he asked if he thought Ino could ever actually love someone like him. Then finally, when Ino asked him if he actually ever meant anything anymore because apparently she was sick to death of being around something that wasn't him. He didn't tell her he knew it made her want to cry.

His reply had been a simple request for her to teach him to. So she screamed, and said that it wasn't actually Asuma who was dead because he was standing right in front of her. Wearing about the same clothes, smoking the same brand of cigarettes and with the same two knives at hand. He knew she didn't mean it. But he also knew then that perhaps, it was just too late.

So he smiled, and then told her if she could teach him in a week then he would forget her comment and everything would be ok again. If not, then she could never expect to speak to him again because he couldn't care for her anymore if she thought it wasn't him doing the caring and it was her teacher instead. He could have said worse. He could have bore a grudge against her, for saying something as awful as that. But he'd given her a chance, because Ino was the sort of person who could do anything. No matter what. Because of that, he trusted her to be able to fix things. He knew she could do it. He needed to believe in something.

She agreed. He could already think of over two hundred ways she would try to do it and fail. Yet, he couldn't even think one way in which she could succeed although he wanted her to. He wanted to feel like he was alive again. He thought Ino would accept no boundaries and go completely out of the box then tear it down to build something with much more space. She would reinvent what was right and wrong to help him. Of course, he was correct.

Ino was a dreamer, one who molded everything to suit what she wanted. She thought up sheer brilliance and breathed magic, and when she smiled it made others cry because it was such a wonderful sight to see such life in someone. She was a beacon of hope. She was a heartbreaker. She was everything all rolled into one; good and bad, night and day, dreams and realities and it made her something unheard of. It made her dangerous.

He should of known that it was a bad idea to challenge her when a manic grin spread across her face soon after the shock set in, but he supposed that after years of knowing her and seeing her everyday it never really occurred to him how very potent Ino's skills could be. She was one of the most destructive people he knew. She could tear people apart from the inside. She could sift through memories. She could show you everything you wanted. She could make you love her, and you wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. They both stared at each other, and then said one simple sentence simultaneously. Being stubborn was the way they lived with each other, for neither of them were overly keen on losing. Even if he wanted to be real again, Shikamaru knew that it was hard to break a habit.

"You will lose."

* * *

They took up arms on Tuesday.

"Reality doesn't just bite, Shikamaru." Ino murmured, coating her lips in another soft layer of gloss as she stared in the mirror. The mascara was next, thinly applied and dragged out to highlight the length of her eyelashes perfectly. Then powder, evenly spread. Shikamaru had to wonder if she could actually breathe under all that make up. Then he reminded himself that he wasn't sure he could even breathe without it, bearing in mind she though whatever Shikamaru was died a long time ago. He grinned coldly.

"No, it kisses and caresses and makes you enjoy the pain of it." Ino turned on him, giving him a simpering look before sidling over to his side on her bed. She stared at him with her far too blue eyes, and then kissed him savagely. Her lips were soft but effective, fighting his needily before she moved quickly and bit his neck. He hissed when she pulled away, seeing the dark mark she had left on his neck.

"That was unorthodox." Shikamaru said almost silently, bringing his hand up to his neck and pressing the tough skin she had made turn slightly purple as carefully as he could. It hurt to touch. The sting shot through his neck, making him wince slightly. Ino grinned, and then returned to her mirror to apply another layer of lip gloss. Her last one had been ruined. Smeared over his lips and neck without mercy. How very kind of her, he thought sarcastically.

"War always is." She muttered complacently, as though nothing had happened. He reached out quickly and yanked her wrist, causing her topple off the chair by her looking glass. She fell flat on her back, and glared up at him with pursed lips. She was clearly in pain, hitting the floor with that force. He expected her to complain, but instead her ugly angry look was soon replaced with a small victorious smirk and thin raised eyebrows that implied everything.

"No, Ino, I do not like it rough."

* * *

He started to fight back on Wednesday.

"You know, Ino, Chouji loves you." It was a spontaneous sentence, blurted out in anger as she sat with a lollipop right in front of him and tried to entice him as best she could. Sure, Ino knew how to play with minds, but he wasn't intending on being one of her bigger conquests. He might have expected her to be the one to teach him to live again, but he didn't want it due to her making him her new toy. The dolls she played with always ended up broken.

"Does he know you love me too?" Ino grinned, gently covering her lips in thin layer of moisture. Her pink tongue slid back into her mouth silently, and he couldn't help but stare at her lips as she pressed the lollipop against them once more. He snapped a moment when he realised she had noticed his look, his eyes darting back upwards to meet hers. They watched him brightly. Ino was all too playful after she had heard something so disastrous. Or maybe she just didn't care what happened to their best friend.

"You know." It dawned on Shikamaru as the words slipped out of his mouth. Ino smiled intoxicatingly again, rolling the lollipop across her glossy lips and as much as he hated himself for it he couldn't stop staring. Even when her mouth drew into a wide smile, and she leant forward. They were in the middle of a park, and she was seducing him in plain sight of everyone around by doing that. He briefly wondered if she had any shame. Well, he wasn't sure he did anymore and she was bringing out the worst him. Maybe he was starting to live a little again, seeing as they were gaining a few similarities.

"About you? Of course. I've always known." Ino beamed cattily. He glared at her. No, not him. That hadn't been what he meant. He was talking about Chouji. Not that she seemed to notice. She was busy trying to break another man instead, and if Chouji got hurt in the process it didn't seem as though she would care very much. Fixing him, apparently, was more important. Even if her method meant breaking him all over again first, because Shikamaru was put together all wrong. She laughed suddenly.

"Not me, you idiot. Chouji, he loves you." Shikamaru growled. Ino giggled louder. It reminded him of her twelve year old snigger, when he had been so angry at her at various different times. He'd always complained she was throwing herself all over Sasuke, that it was pointless because Sakura was the one on his team. Not that Ino listened. She just got angrier than him, and tried harder. Back then, he'd wondered if it was because he didn't want Sasuke to have her or if it was because he felt like she'd just be mistreated by him. Or if it was because he really did care about her. Not that he'd know, he'd always dismissed the last reason.

"I love you too, Shikamaru." Ino said, and then kissed him for the second time that week. He had to admit, the lollipop tasted good. Like strawberries and cream. Like peppermint and her toothpaste and Ino. That was why he couldn't stop it, he told himself.

That was his excuse.

* * *

On Thursday, they reached a temporary truce.

He'd gone on the Wednesday night; not knowing if he'd be back alive or dead and if Ino hadn't run to him without a clue where he was he would probably be the latter of the two states. But he was pretty dead inside anyway, so he supposed it wouldn't really matter either way.

But blood was filling his lungs, just like it had with Asuma and he was going to drown in it. He'd been certain of that. So certain. Because Ino hadn't been able to save Asuma. She'd saved his heart and repaired his veins, arteries, capillaries easily but it hadn't worked. She'd done everything as she had been taught, and she'd still believed for months afterwards that she had done something wrong. She poured over books and crammed in all the medical knowledge she could until she was at the point of exhaustion. The worst part was that Shikamaru wasn't even able to tell her that it wasn't her fault. Whenever he tried, she just cried and if there was one thing he couldn't stand to see it was Ino crying. But that day, it had been right. It had been the same thing all over again with more time and Shikamaru was physically alive and breathing. She'd done it right. She'd saved him.

Maybe, deep down, it felt like saving the new Asuma because Ino cried all over again and once more Shikamaru wasn't able to do a thing about it. He could only hold her. So Ino sobbed into the barely repaired machine. He sat silently. Chouji stared, unable to say a thing. They were Team Ten all over again, and things were even more unsteady than before. Then they were broke once more, because Chouji ruined everything with a few words.

"I'm here if you need me, Ino." Shikamaru's eyes shot upwards, and met Chouji's quickly. A look of misunderstanding crossed between them, and Ino didn't seem to notice because she carried on crying. Maybe it was better that way. If she didn't know that Shikamaru might just have been losing his footing, and he didn't know exactly why that was.

Before either he or even maybe Ino could reply at all, Kakashi interrupted the moment. He made a quiet entrance, which Shikamaru had come to expect from him. Kakashi was a man of few words, and when he did speak it was only to inform him of something useful or something he needed to know. No compliments, although Shikamaru knew he admired the plans he made. No coldness, although Shikamaru knew that he thought Chouji needed to think things out a little more. In fact, Kakashi only spoke to Ino that he could recall when it wasn't necessary when mentioning that she cared a lot about her team mates. Especially, Sakura had laughed rather loudly whilst saying, Shikamaru. Not that she understood.

Neither did he, though. Maybe Ino just wanted to be told that he was Asuma, that it was ok and that he was fine because it was really Shikamaru who was hurt. Maybe she wanted to think he was Shikamaru again, and accept the death of Asuma. Maybe she wanted Shikamaru more than he could ever understand. Or maybe, she wanted neither of them. Maybe, although she still referred to Sasuke as a traitor it was him she wanted. The silent, stoic Adonis. Looking as though he was sculpted from marble, instead of rough around the edges like Shikamaru. Or even tattered and torn, because he was getting worse instead of better when Ino was around and he was beginning to get the feeling he was wrong about her being the one to put things together again. She might have once cared for the underdogs, but saving them was something entirely different.

So unravelling the mystery that was Yamanaka Ino was a job for somebody else, because she didn't say anything to do with her unless it was mentioning a date when pressed to or something she'd done with one of her friends. Ino hid the emptiness of herself with gossip. She didn't want people to know about her. It made things more difficult. Shikamaru however wanted to take her apart piece by piece like he was disassembling a grand work of handcrafted art, to find out what she really was. She'd changed a lot, and she was already too hard to understand but maybe it he took it bit by bit he could look underneath the flesh and bone and makeup and see what she really was. But first, he needed practice.

"Kakashi, who are you?" Shikamaru stated as Ino forced herself off his shoulder and quickly wiped her eyes as though nothing had happened. The silver-haired male stared at her for a moment as if questioning her, but then turned to Shikamaru. The shadow user could almost imagine him smiling under his navy mask, a thin and weary look that would make people question his very existence. Kakashi was tired, Shikamaru decided. His years had been filled with trouble and hardship, and yet he still carried on, probably not questioning why. Just like him, Kakashi was no longer living. The brown haired man had a lot to learn.

"You tell me." Kakashi answered cryptically, winking at Shikamaru almost laughably. Shikamaru pulled himself up, and then looked between Kakashi and Ino before finally understanding. Kakashi wasn't beyond repair. He was just an idiot. But a clever idiot, who could see what really happened in life and knew what to do better than Shikamaru did. Kakashi knew what he was. He was every rumour, every tale and lie spread about him and he was it in the flesh. He was said to be the copy-ninja, so he was. It was said that he was a brilliant shinobi, and so he was. Kakashi must have believed that you were only as good as what others thought. What you did only contributed to it. But when Shikamaru looked at Ino, he couldn't make that idea fit. She made it wrong.

Ino was called many things by lesser people, and rarely any of them from other women were flattering. Moegi said she dressed like she should be on a street corner every night. Temari said that she was weak, compared to every other person her age. Sakura said that she was disappointing in her progress, seeing as she had been the early bloomer. The smart one. The popular one. The perfect one. But Ino was anything but that. Men said that she was an unwilling diva, a monster with the guise of Aphrodite, beautiful but unattainable. That was more accurate, but it wasn't correct. When Shikamaru looked at Ino, he saw something else.

He saw fragility. Ino was beginning to fall apart. She had reached out and held everything together for so long, but she was being torn to pieces because the weight was starting to be too much for her to handle. He saw dreams. Ino was weaving a life. Taking threads and strands of hope and wanton smiles and making them hers, making them even better. Making them beautiful. He saw love. Because everything she did, she did out of it. Because she was making him live by making him feel things which didn't belong anymore. Because she was doing exactly what he had expected and in all the wrong ways. He was falling for her.

Then Ino said it. She looked directly at Kakashi without a hint of disdain or worry and beamed like her words meant nothing. But with Ino, words were everything. Actions were done on whim. Words were as well thought out as penned Latin epics, Shakespearean tales and religious texts by her. She hid behind them. Used them as tools. Let them do everything for her. Ino, in essence, relied on words, fanciful and lying as they often were.

"You're Kakashi." Then Shikamaru looked at her, and saw the Ino he had always seen. Not love. Nothing more, nothing less than Ino. Just as she always had been. Just as he didn't want her to be. So he hated it. Hated her. Because it was easier for her to accept the blame. He didn't like this mess. Where Kakashi was just Kakashi and Chouji was just Chouji and Ino was just brilliant beautiful bombshell Ino who was driving him crazy. Where Shikamaru was just unloved teacher Asuma to her. Nothing more, nothing less.

He wasn't sure he wanted to be alive anymore.

* * *

On Friday, he knew he had won.

It was the darkest time he could have possibly ran out of his house, barefoot and with his hair tussled. Dirt was still streaked down his cheeks where his female parent (not Mother, that was too personal) had made him take the food out to the deer he would supposedly one day inherit as the son of the main Nara branch. Not that he wanted them. They were no use to him. They were not Chouji with his shattered heart and dangerous or a sharp metal tool that could cut into skin or dice it to pieces and they were not Ino. Ino, the last personal thing to him. He needed her, he had decided at that moment. Maybe he couldn't be alive again, but having life in his cold dark grasp was close enough.

So he walked three streets to the flower shop, smacked on her front door as hard as he could and prayed Inoichi wouldn't be the face there instead of hers. Because she made things easier, and he didn't like to admit defeat as it was. But when she answered it only a few minutes later; in her usual purple outfit that had been crumpled beyond belief, with her hair even messier than his and with dried up mascara crinkling off of her eyelashes with every new bat of the seductive things he wasn't sure what to do anymore. She was just as defeated as him. So he pursed his lips, and changed his words entirely.

"Can I stay the night?" He whispered wanly. She nodded sleepily, rubbing one of her tired eyes that clearly hadn't been closed for a while and fumbled with the locks to let him in. They almost collapsed into each other, and when she grabbed his arm and dragged him up the stairs before they could reach the bed he found himself counting them like sheep. One step, two step, three step, Ino. But even in his dreams, he could never have her. Not like then.

So when she fell into her bed next to him, he didn't complain at all. He'd been the one to run to her, although he was breaking her. He'd been the one to trust her, although trusting him was the last thing she wanted to do right then. He'd been the one who had begun to love her, and she didn't want love at a time like that. Especially from the very person who was tiring her out and wearing her pride thin down to the bone with a stupid plan of his.

So when he stroked her hair until she finally slid off to sleep, he said it. A hundred and one times, over and over. One thing that he didn't really mean. Because he was certain that it was just lust; and holding her tiny little body against his bulkier one didn't mean he was protective of her, and pushing his large feet against her smaller ones didn't mean he liked keeping her feet warm so she didn't shiver in the night because he didn't want her to be cold, and pressing his lips on her forehead didn't mean he loved her in any other way other than a friend. He said a hundred and one useless things that didn't really mean anything, to make up for all the words she said that drove everyone crazy. Because he didn't know what else to do.

Truthfully, he'd expected to come out of his insane competition with everything put together again. But Ino being Ino, she'd turned that on its head without even trying. Now, he would be the one to make her live. Even if he didn't know what living was.

When he told himself that, it was almost convincing.

* * *

On Saturday, he tried to make things work again.

He went out and bought flowers from another shop, one on the other side of town. Then he found out their meaning, and gave them to Temari. She clearly didn't understand the gesture, because she seemed pleased that they meant she was terrifying. Then he went out and purchased jewellery, but he realised Ino didn't care for flashy things so he unloaded the sapphire necklace onto Shiho who seemed more than pleased with the gift than he had expected. Then he came to own so candy in a heart-shaped box, and realised Ino didn't like chocolate all that much. Or candy in general, for that matter. So he left them at the Akimichi household for Chouji, hoping that they could sort things out when he'd made things right.

So then he sat down, and wrote a letter saying all the things he disliked about her and liked about her and weighed them up. Then scribbled out all the bad things, because there were a lot and he didn't really care about any of them anyway. Then he scribbled out the entire thing, because he didn't like what he had inked out to begin with. Words were never his thing.

So he simply walked over to her, and resignedly gave in. Patted her on the back, told her she'd won and to talk to him the next day when he had a prize to give her. It wouldn't be flowers or jewellery or chocolate, but he was hoping his gift would still be good enough. Because it wasn't a toy. It would last longer and it was something he could only give to her.

He'd be giving away his heart.

* * *

It ended on a Sunday.

"I love you."

Shikamaru smiled at Ino as he said it. She should have known, anyway.

Even if she didn't know that even though he had told her that one hundred and one or more times, that was actually the first one. The first one where he meant it. The first one where it was said because she'd done something right and so had he and everything was alive. The first one after he began to face things, face her, and learn to truly be.

The first one where they both felt alive.

* * *

Finally, an update. People must hate me, the time I have taken to do this one.

Reviews are loved. :)


	24. The Necessary

Summary: _He'd said the words without even thinking._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Oblivion is a good game, but it is also a very distracting game.

Now showing **Theme Twenty-Four: Good night.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Necessary_**

* * *

Ino needed air.

Her lungs were making it hard to breathe. The alveoli were probably be choked by blood. Her mouth was drying and her nose wasn't working right although it still looked the same. The sting in her eyes was harsh and biting, and she could barely see Shikamaru when he was shouting and Sakura was pouring warm green feelings into her as she screamed and tried to fix things. The reliance almost made her want to give up. But she couldn't, not then. Not until she had sorted out a few things.

She briefly wondered if that was what dying felt like. When your limbs screamed for vital chemicals to produce energy, and you were flat out on the floor like you were road kill. Hit and run. Nobody really mattered so much in this world that they couldn't be compared to animals. That was one thing she needed to change. Trust. It was becoming just a word, just a long-passed memory and a legend. Strange, how such things could be destroyed so easily. But Asuma's blood had soaked her hands a long time ago when she had lain on his still chest, hoping somehow that she could change things all over and be Sakura instead. Because that way, she might of saved him. No matter how much anyone said it wouldn't even be possible then. That time was too short. Because she would have. She could of done it, if blonde had been pink and blue had been green and she had been a medic instead of a torturer.

She also needed to change that. Ino was a destroyer. She ripped out the memories of others; their loves, their hates and everything about them and she couldn't fix what she had done. She didn't have perfect chakra control or strength given only to a favoured pupil. She didn't even have ointments or old Hyuga medical recipes that had been passed down. Or poison needles and a pet pig, as amusing as that would be with her name. No, Ino had soft smooth hands that could hold a kunai and aim it, or fashion into an odd shape that people never really knew the danger of all that well because humans always had the funniest habit of liking pretty people instead of those that could actually help them get anywhere. So Ino needed to become a repairer, a mechanic of the human body who saw the cogs inside and knew just how to turn them the way she wanted. To harm or to heal. To slaughter or save. She needed to make things go two ways, instead of just one.

But most of all, Ino needed to change the word 'need' to something better. Selfish, typical humans like herself used that word a lot. Saying she needed Chouji to pick up her new arrival of flowers shipments, rather than saying that she could use his help. Saying she needed Sakura to give her oxygen because she didn't have it right then, instead of smiling and willing her to just because they loved each other in only a way they could understand. Saying she needed Shikamaru to say there and look at her (as broken and ugly as she looked) because he was Shikamaru and she was Ino and they were always there for each other. No matter what.

It was getting dark. The sun was dipping into the bottom of the mountains from what she could see, and she still had some minor injuries. But that was fine. She had the vital needs once again, and Shikamaru could sling her over his back the way she was then without too much extra damage. She winced as her still shattered bone under the skin of her arm was prodded to see if she could be lifted by that, and then offered her other arm up. He did what she was thinking of without question, and from his back Ino stared at the sky as it was beginning to turn into a painting of orange hues and yellow slits. The next day, she would do something that would make her a little less needy.

Because she was sick of Tenten smiling gently when she missed her targets. She was sick of Hinata saying that it wasn't her fault; it was just that the heiress hadn't been able to explain all that well. She was sick of Sakura's disapproving look when she saw the type of missions she accepted. She was sick of Shikaku and Chouza saying that she couldn't help being brash and running into situations just like her father did. She was sick of Chouji cooking for her, because apparently even the basic things seemed hard for her to manage. But most of all, she was sick of Shikamaru, whose back she was on right then. Because he said that she was fine just the way she was, because if she tried any harder she'd get herself killed. Her pride was strong, and her resolve would not be challenged. Yamanaka Ino would not give up. So she said something to her old self as she began to drift off to sleep, and the stars began to twinkle in the sky to light her path as Shikamaru carried her.

"Good night."

* * *

Morino Ibiki needed her.

She couldn't say that she hadn't been expecting it. She was climbing the ranks of torture and interrogation faster than anybody ever had, surpassing even her father and the two other Yamanaka clan members of Konoha before them. They might have been a small clan, but Ino's progress did not go un-noticed. Her grandparents were proud that they had lived to see someone beat their advancement and perhaps they were happy because they even expected her to outlive the average life expectancy like they had a long time ago. Her father was more reserved, clearly pleased with his darling princess but also tantalised by the idea of his daughter being in even more danger. So when Ibiki offered her the job only the post beneath him, she had only one thing to say to him.

"Sorry, I'm not interested." She deadpanned. The warm, inviting brown liquid slid down her throat. Whiskey was a lot better than all of those fruity little drinks. Firstly because of the effectiveness it possessed, the potent and sometimes lethal lack of soberness setting in quickly and making her a lot more cheerful about her current dilemmas. Secondly because it was easier to notice when somebody had drugged it, and usually in foreign countries or when facing opposition such as her fellow members of torture and interrogation that was useful.

"Why not?" Ibiki flat out questioned, his lips tight and thin. Normally, he didn't cut straight to the point unless it was for a good reason. Nine of ten times, that good reason was because he was extremely aggravated. That was the thing she found most amusing about the rough older man. She was only a little girl according to him, and yet she already knew how to push all of his buttons like nobody else could. She knew a lot about him. She supposed that was why. His crooked smile told her he had suffered on the rare times he showed it. His black eyes told her he liked to hide things. His gloved hands told her he was intelligent and perhaps well-read, because he not only used them to hide marks but also thin lines that had been indented into his skin from books or maybe even manuals. His scars told her that he was loyal, and they also told her that saying no to him was not an option. She chose to ignore that warning.

"I'm not interested in torture and interrogation anymore. It's boring." Ino replied plainly, rolling around the drink in the glass and watching as the ice cubes clinked against the sides. Ibiki hadn't touched his drink. She almost found it funny, the way he would not drink anything unless he poured it himself. He was a paranoid man. But she had to say, she understood his paranoia slightly. He didn't believe that anybody was all good or bad or willing to do anything like he was, no matter how unorthodox it was. That was also the very reason she knew to be wary when around him or telling him something she felt he needed to hear that could possibly put her in a rather high amount of danger if it set off his trigger.

"You find learning everything about a person boring? It's your best skill." Ibiki wasn't at all convinced. She could see his hand perched on the edge of his chair, gripping tightly from the corner of her eye. He was going to lash out in a minute. She grinned saccharinely sweetly, taking a gentle sip from the glass before coating her lips in a layer of moisture from her tongue intoxicatingly. She was certain he was watching. She knew just how to play with everyone, and she assumed that Ibiki was just like every other man in most ways. She could wear him down with some simple well-placed airhead moves. They'd worked before, and doubtless, they would work again. Even in the slightly more serious situation she was in.

"Well, it's not a pretty job either, is it?" A third person chimed in as he joined them. Shikamaru sat in between them on an empty chair that kept them barely a few inches apart, keeping a careful watch on the older male. She hated it when Shikamaru got involved. She stared coldly at the back of his head as he stared blankly at Ibiki, who seemed to want to laugh more than she did when bad things happened to good people. They both had rather twisted morals. She supposed that was why the tough torturer liked her. Despite her eccentricity at times such as not wanting to split a hair that a prisoner could pull or hurt her hand by punching one of the idiots, she got the job done with her warped ways.

"So it doesn't suit her? You're a well-known strategist. I expected you to be clever." Ino's breath hitched a moment, and she turned to look at Ibiki, wondering if he really had just insulted her looks or if it was meant another way. Shikamaru must have twitched, because he knew the danger of insulting something she was proud of. Ino shot to her feet.

"Are you insinuating something, Morino?" Ino addressed him with tight lips, tapping her right arm with long and filed fingernails as if to make her point. They had been painted beautifully, and her makeup was always finished perfectly. Her outfit caught attention, and the colour suited her. Even her hair was always immaculate. Gloss always coated her lips softly, catching the light to make men stare. There was nothing about her in her eyes which was not attractive. She was the best looking person there was in Konoha, and you would have to be mad to disagree with that.

"What about underneath all that?" Ibiki stated flat out. He captured her expertly. Ino blinked, clearly taken aback and Shikamaru grabbed her wrist quickly when he saw it move quickly upwards and attempt to go past him with her hand outstretched. Her temper couldn't get the best of her. He wouldn't let it. He turned to Ibiki, her wrist still caught in his fingers carefully so that she could not hurt or be hurt.

"Ino doesn't enjoy destruction." Shikamaru replied. The muscles in her arm stopped tensing beneath his grip, and her hand went limp. He was so correct, and he probably didn't even know it. She pulled her hand away roughly despite the pain it created, and looked calmly at Ibiki. She frowned, then turned on her heels and left, leaving only two words behind her that should have been warmer. Shikamaru wondered when she became so different.

"Good night."

* * *

Sakura needed her.

"Why are you doing this?" The words slid out of her mouth before she could stop them, and Ino had looked up at her without much of a reaction. She had expected something like that. Someone who was so full of themselves questioning why she bothered, because they thought she wouldn't get anywhere. But Sakura was wrong. Completely incorrect, in fact.

"Because." Ino answered ambiguously, not really wanting to tell her the answer. What did it matter to Sakura? She had been trained for years on end without stop, the legacy of the Fifth Hokage. She was Tsunade's pupil, the skilled medic and boulder-crushing beast, she was the favourite of all those who set eyes on her without question. But Ino hadn't been so lucky. She was the one from the correct bloodline, but that didn't amount to anything as all she got from it was a few skills only useful for spying and torture. She didn't have perfect chakra control, but the girl who never deserved it did. Ino wasn't a healer. Sakura was. But Ino was going to change that. She was going to be the one to do as she pleased from then onwards.

"You hate me." Sakura stated abruptly. The mouse Ino had been working on twitched to life beneath her fingers, but Ino didn't confirm the guess that the pink haired girl had given her. What did it matter? They were best friends, and therefore, they had grown up to be rivals. Just as all other best friends did. When one succeeded, the other became jealous. Not that Ino was working from jealousy. She just wanted to do something right for once. Like Sakura always did. Because that way, everything would be the way it was supposed to be.

"It's alive." Ino avoided giving some sort of reply to the question. It wasn't enough. The short pause confirmed it. Sakura stared at her, her bottom lip quavering giving her the resemblance of a small child, like she was five all over again and being picked on for her big forehead. Then, Ino had been the one to save the day. She had been the one who always did everything just the way she was supposed to. She was the one everyone liked. She was the one everyone looked up to. She was the one everyone begged for, prayed for, needed.

"Why?" Sakura asked, and Ino continued to ignore the statement. She sounded hurt. Ino did not even look up, or even move away her long fringe to see her. Shrouding her face meant that she could hide a little longer, Sakura supposed. But Ino sucked in air, then stood straight up and stared directly at her before answering calmly.

"You're not useless." She commented dryly, before moving on to the next dead animal. The bird had two broken wings. Maybe it had died for that reason. Not being able to fly, to do what you were supposed to do, was a horrible feeling. Ino knew it well. Being encased in a small, dark space that was even worse than a capturing cage. That was a strange thing about being a human. You liked to build cages for yourself. You built landscapes and homes and gave your name and life for little more than a piece of land with a name. Because that was where you belonged – where you were trapped – where you had chosen to keep yourself. Maybe that meant Ino was no longer human, and little better than an animal. Not that she cared.

"But I need you!" Sakura shrieked suddenly, and Ino looked up once more. Her eyes became cold as she looked into the minty green pair that were filling with tears and spoke of confusion without even using words. Her lips turned tightly downwards, as though the grimace they bore would become irreversible. Oh, God, how she hated it when people said things like that. Especially when they didn't really mean it at all.

"What would you know about needing something? You've always had everything you ever wanted. Don't use that word like you understand it!" Ino snapped suddenly. Sakura looked shocked. The mouse that had sprung to life so quickly squeaked on the table, and Ino reached out and grabbed it before snapping its neck in an instant. Sakura had never known her to do something like that. Ino could hurt people, but only when she needed to. Other than that, Ino wouldn't hurt a thing. That was the very thing that made others like her.

"That's enough, Ino." Shikamaru had slid open the door. Ino stared at the dead mouse in her hand a moment sadly before putting it back on the table next to the bird. She turned her back on them both and began to pour energy into it again as best she could, even though she knew it was too late. She couldn't fix things again. She'd finally fixed something that had been destroyed, only to do what she had always done. She had crushed something. She heard Sakura leave the room, the door swinging quietly shut behind her. She knew Shikamaru was still there. But she didn't care. No, things needed fixing. She needed to do it again. Over and over and over until it was a second nature to both slaughter and save.

"Why won't it fix?" Ino whined to herself, when the mouse still didn't begin to live once more. She felt Shikamaru move beside her. He radiated anger. She knew why. She had done something wrong. Something beyond his expectations. It was ugly, and Shikamaru didn't like mess or anger or hate. Neither did she, really, but it couldn't be helped. That was how she reasoned with herself, at least.

"It feels freer wherever it is now. Heal the bird." His voice shook slightly, wavering as he spoke. She wondered if he really believed his own words, because she didn't believe them at all. The key to lying well was to believe your own lies, sometimes. Unless they were that you were someone else. For a Yamanaka, things always went wrong if you did that. Being so many people, seeing their lives and knowing who they were. If you could be them for just a while, things were fine. But if you got attached, you'd lose yourself in the lies. She wondered if his father had ever mentioned that to him. Shikaku didn't seem the type to tell his son the darker things. He let him find out by himself, through experience.

But she did it anyway. She calmed down as best she could, and focused on the task at hand. Then when she blinked, it happened. The bird began to twitch. The broken wings began to flutter. The feet hopped upwards. Then it was there, fixed, fine all over again. But it must have known that it was not her job to do such things. As soon as she lifted out her finger towards it so it could hop on and be checked over, it moved upwards and flew out of the window in front of them. Tears stung her eyes.

"Shikamaru, I want to need something like that bird needs freedom." Ino told him, her voice cracking as she spoke. His hand met with hers back to back, and their fingers intertwined softly. That to her was worth more than words. More than the useless things to fill silence. He meant it. He meant everything. Then he used words anyway. He must of thought she didn't understand what he wanted to say at all. But she did.

"So I'll be your necessity." He half-mumbled. Tears stung her eyes, and she looked down at the broken mouse. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't meant to split the neck bone of something so small and fragile. She hadn't meant to hurt something so helpless. She hadn't needed to at all. But needing wasn't important anymore. Anybody could need something. To her right then, it was about necessities. The things that were really important, that you just couldn't live without. She managed a weak smile.

"Good night."

* * *

Shikamaru was her necessity.

He'd said the words without even thinking. He'd just upped and outed it, spilled them out like confessional writings made of ink on paper, frail and endangered by scribbles or water. Then in between the tangles and tumbles of words that had rung through her head like sounding bells, it hit her. He was there all along. Always watching, waiting, wanting, and needing the necessity that she had become for him without even realising.

So it happened. The feeling began to crawl through her too, bubbling up and tearing past everything in its path until she finally began to notice it. To realise what it was. The words were ugly and shameful and she hated them, but they came to her lips anyway and poured out her heart without her ever meaning to use them.

"You are my necessity." She muttered, her heart thrumming softly and the lack of noise getting to her. She could hear the pounding in her ears. She could feel the air between them being sucked in by him, taking it away. She could smell the salt of her tears beginning to climb into her eyes and then retreat once more, sharply and spitefully taking whatever other moisture her body had with them. She licked her dry lips.

"I know." He said. It was true. She was certain of that much. He had probably known for a long time. Ever since she had been flung over his back and carried back with the life she wasn't sure she wanted to live still carrying on with each new breath. He must have known then that she would change herself. That she would do anything.

"I'll be anything you want me to be." She said, in some half-worded confession. He smiled weakly at her, and then reached out and grabbed her hand. Because that was what he was used to. Ino made weak unwilling apologies and mocking smiles. Ino laughed at things that cut her and traded dreams every time she wanted to. She was just the way he wanted her to be, the way she had always been, and that was best.

"What if I just want you to be the way you are now?" Shikamaru asked. She blinked. Fourteen words. Five seconds. One smile. Shikamaru always made things too poignant. They were on a dirt path in the middle of nowhere, going to a mission that was probably suicidal and he was reaching out to her all over again. Telling her that she was fine just the way she was, just as he always had. Telling her that she was perfect, more or less. Give or take a temper.

"I don't believe you." She insisted calmly. Because she was pretty, he was smart. She liked tall dark guys with painted faces and stony smiles who only had eyes for her. He liked short fair-haired average girls with average features and gentle words for all those who deserved it but saved only her most beautiful speeches for him. They weren't what each of them wanted in a partner. But they were both what each other found a necessity.

"Believe this." Shikamaru told her, and then closed the small distance between them instantly. Their lips met. Ino jolted under his touch. She had never believed him. Not once. But that one action was proof, and she wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry because Shikamaru knew everything about her. The bad and the good and everything in between. He accepted it, too. She just thought about all that she had done to herself. All that she had done to him. Then when she could finally breathe again, she said it to what she had become.

"Good night."

* * *

Ahaha, I conformed to the theme a bit with this one.

Reviews are loved. :)


	25. The Child

Summary: _Because Shikamaru would do it a million times over, just for her._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I lost my entire Oblivion game. Thirty eight to six. This damn well sucks. On the other hand, it means I have finally managed to concentrate on something rather than being distracted a whole lot. Catch 22, or something like that I suppose. Also, I figured we never really see much of a very child-like child Shikamaru because we assume that he's always acted middle-aged. But really, with Chouji in the flashbacks he seems quite childish. Hence this came out of my brain when I saw the prompt.

Now exploding out **Theme Twenty-Five: Fence.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Child_**

* * *

At five years old, Shikamaru didn't find girls pretty.

They had all kinds of nasty germs, even if his brain couldn't explain their lack of physical manifestation. They had too, because Chouji said that Naruto and Kiba told him so, and Shikamaru could never find it in his young heart to not believe his best friend. But even so, there was a nagging doubt. The boys were the unclean ones who were rough and crude, apart from him really. His mother made sure he washed more than slept, and was certainly the one to nearly half frighten him to death over picking scabs from cuts. The girls always smelled like flowers and were really gentle, apart from one he'd seen in his class. But he didn't even know her name, really, and he'd decided he didn't want to.

But then it happened. That little girl who he found icky and thought must have had the nastiest germs was just sitting behind the fence of the house down the road from his, and she was fixing something. He didn't really understand how she was doing it, because he didn't know about how medics healed things then. But there was a soft green glow coming from her hands, and her face was forced into concentration. To no avail. But even so, that was the girl from his class and she wasn't using chakra in a way he knew about then. She was doing something strange, and he didn't understand it at all. He didn't like it. But it didn't stop him.

"Magic." He whispered. He knelt down by the fence, and saw that her eyes were beginning to fill with tears. He'd seen her friend like that the other week, the one with the pink hair who wasn't as popular as her. He found it funny, how even though everyone loved her he didn't even care about her. He didn't understand why she was so good. She was always playing rough with the guys when they played rough with her, and her thin pale knees were always covered in dirt or blood and torn skin where she had scraped them. Her short blonde hair was always in an unruly mess and flicked back in the wind, and she had slender limbs that stuck out like gangly sticks. Then her eyes. They were always too blue, too sharp, too knowing for what they should have been. He didn't trust her at all. Just like he didn't trust fairytales, because they were full of rubbish and weren't true. But she was doing magic right then.

"Daddy said I can fix this if I try, but it's not magic. He said if I can, then he'll teach me how to read people's minds after my birthday." She replied blankly, not even looking up. She didn't even seem to care who he was, but that was fine. Even so, she was lying, because it had to be magic and he didn't know what else it could be. Fairytales weren't supposed to lie.

"Are you a fairy?" He asked breathlessly. It was only then that she stopped and looked up, staring at him as if he truly were insane. A grin lit up her face, and although he didn't think girls were pretty (because they were nasty, especially this one) he had to admit being kept apart by a few planks of wood was something he didn't like. He wanted to be closer to her, and he wanted to see her smile again because it made him feel really happy too. It was then that she laughed straight in his face, as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

"No. You go to the academy, right? You can do it too." She told him, and suddenly snaked her small thin hand through the gaps of the picket fence. He looked at it, and hesitated. Girls were germy. But she wasn't just a girl, even if he didn't know her. She was something else entirely, if she knew how to do magic. If she could help him do it too. He reached out his hand warily, and took her outstretched one. She moved it over the bird. Then Shikamaru had to stop himself from gasping. Out of his hand poured the same green magic, and a feeling of warmth and tiredness began to surge through his body.

"Make it stop." He pleaded. She released his hand and the animal sprung to life as he moved it quickly away, retreating back though the hole where the space between them seemed empty and like nothing. He didn't like the magic. It felt like chakra, and chakra was supposed to be blue. It said that on his diagrams in his books. Unless it was chakra, and it was just something he didn't understand? He doubted it. In his five year old mind, he knew everything and that wasn't chakra. It was bad magic; she had to be a witch. He swallowed.

"Have you never used chakra before, Shikamaru?" She asked, seeming amused. He almost choked. She knew his name, and he'd never told her it. Why would she know him? He wasn't one of the really almost-famous kids like she was. He was the underdog, the guy nobody knew, the unpopular lazy guy who hung out with a dog boy, a loser of a prankster and a chubby kid. He didn't like it at all when she said that, with that sparkle in her eyes.

"Witch." He summarised, before turning on heel and running from the laughing girl. What was he to know about medical ninjutsu then, and the way his father had a library of ingredients preserved for use in that exact field that had been passed down for generations? He'd never of guessed that their fathers were best friends either, or that her father had learnt the basics from his own old man and tried to get his princess ahead of everybody else in their class. He hadn't even known her name. Her name, who she was, the thing that gave her a label of life when the hospital had delivered her. Her silly name, of all things. But for a witch, she was pretty. It was then he decided he was going to stay away from pretty girls, and marry an average one because she was scary and could do things he didn't understand. That, and just maybe, all pretty girls were witches.

Children always think that they know best.

* * *

At twelve years old, Nara Shikamaru learnt her name.

He'd long forgotten the incident where they finally talked to one another and he'd embarrassed himself, but even then if he had remembered it he doubted it would have stopped fate. Some things, no matter what Neji's changed mantra proclaimed, were meant to happen. Otherwise she wouldn't have seated herself next to him on their final day before thinking it though after her fight with her ex-best friend, she wouldn't have been put on his team and he would never even know her.

In many ways, he still didn't. He knew that she was pretty and that for that reason he didn't like her at all. He couldn't remember why, but something at the back of his mind told him that he had decided he liked average girls a long time ago for some reason or the other. Because just as he liked to think, pretty girls were never nice he supposed. That golden rule of his was exceptionally true for her, seeing as she supported mean like it was the new pink of girl fashion. It was obvious enough that she would still fight for Sasuke with that other girl so she liked him clearly; she liked cherry tomatoes, and that she most definitely didn't care for him as anything other than a team mate.

Her name was Yamanaka Ino. That was what he knew. Because he was sure he was even wrong about those little things. Sure, she was pretty. But she rarely mentioned Sasuke anymore, she accepted Chouji's offer of a few chips from the rarely-shared packets he kept on him although she whined about it ruining her diet and she cared about them really. She was mean for that very reason. Her father had told Shikaku that in her own strange way, being critical was the way she helped people. It had been for a long time, since the day her only real friend chose a boy over her – not that Inoichi said that. He couldn't have known like Shikamaru did. The thing about knowing those little things about her was that they amounted to a lot, but even so they never really explained everything about her.

"Shikamaru, what's your favourite thing?" She asked sitting on her garden fence that year, when they were celebrating his passing of the chunin exams. Although he found it hard to like her at times and her questions were often cryptic or blunt (as well as loud and shouted, troublesomely) he couldn't stop himself from answering. Something seemed to have changed about her, in the way she wanted to know more about him. She rarely enquired. She was always there to listen and to soothe and sort, but she never asked to know more. In a way, he supposed it was her version of whatever quiet preservation she possessed. In another way, he didn't think it was that at all and it was just that she was scared to find out what they were really like in case they turned on her like other people had in the past.

"Sleep." He answered without much emotion. Asuma laughed, clapping him on the back, the same as ever. Chouji seemed to expect the answer. Ino nodded. He could normally not deny her a thing, but he supposed the real answer wasn't really one he could say. Because as much as he told himself that he didn't really like her, despite being on the same team and the same with their fathers' fathers and so on and so forth, he couldn't really ever bring himself to mean it at all. His honest answer said that.

_You_. It should have been _you_,_ Ino_. If Asuma or Chouji noticed his lie, they said nothing and just continued their walk home whilst he said he wanted to say hello to her father for a little while and pass on a message from his own. It wasn't at all truthful because he knew their fathers were out drinking together (Chouji and Ino probably knew it too) but still, nobody said a word. Especially not him. Because she was, and he doubted he would ever be able to put that into words. She was just too pretty for him to get them out. He came back to thought when she slid over the other side of the picket fence, then gave him a smile that almost stunned him with it's sheer beauty of simplicity. No gloss that day, he had noticed. She'd finally listened to what he said about her makeup overdoses. It made her even prettier though, so it made him wonder why he'd mentioned it and her dieting in the first place.

"Shikamaru, when you finally grow up, come back to this fence." She told him, and turned her back to him before charging towards her house. Yet she apparently thought he was the childish one. Well, he felt old if that counted for anything. His first kill was a guy more than twice his age. He had plunged a knife she had bought him (because he was too lazy to buy anything for himself) straight through his eye socket, and whilst the man had writhed in pain he'd pinned him with his shadows and watched him bleed to death. It hadn't remotely haunted him afterwards, because he'd never seen it as murder. The guy was going to kill his best friend. The guy was going to kill his teacher. The guy was going to kill Ino. He'd made sure that he never had a chance, and Ino was safe. That was all that mattered.

On top of that he liked fermented soy beans, soft fruits like dried out apricots and spent a lot of his life sleeping. He didn't see how that didn't make him old. But Ino clearly did. It wasn't about his actions, he'd thought then. It was about his mentality. He had to be correct, seeing as he couldn't even say a few words to her. So he sat down next to the fence he had a feeling he should start calling 'The Great Gulf' because it was keeping them apart, leant his back against it and smacked his hand into his forehead. Idiot, he told himself. You absolute idiotic child, being able to die for your country and not tell a girl you just might like her a little bit.

Because over the other side of the fence where they had first spoken, she was probably sitting in her room and thinking of a hundred more guys who would take her. Ones that weren't him. Ones that didn't act like children and hold their tongues and hide behind shadows and lies. With that in mind, he stood up and kicked one of the fence pegs down in a swift, well-aimed and powerful kick. The wood of the picket fence snapped beneath the force, and he knew he'd have to pay Inoichi for it later but he didn't really care right then. It was all down to that thing, he told himself. A simple wooden fence stopping him from getting near her. Like a child sitting outside an impenetrable fort. But forts were supposed to be fought against. The walls were built in order to protect, they were made to be crumbled down. By men, that was.

The overgrown child sat down again, and mourned. He knew her name. He knew what she liked, what she wanted. It was like the unrequited love of a stubborn eight year old that he was going to make her suffer for by stealing the odd kunai or pinching her as she sat on the swings with her supposed friends grinning like a lunatic. But still, it eluded him. Whatever Yamanaka Ino quite essentially was and why she made him act so childish. He kidded himself by whispering monster over and over until the word rung in his ears.

Children are always stubborn.

* * *

At sixteen years old, Shikamaru fell in love with her.

Sure, it wasn't love in the conventional sense. He still couldn't say a word to her, and neither of them brought up the incident four years previously where his crush of sorts had been shot down by his own childishness but he told himself she had to know. Everyone loved her, just as they always had. It was hard not to. The previous year she had started to wear clothing that was a little too showy, and it revealed what she had hidden under bandages all those years and made his mouth dry up on thought, let alone sight. Their first training session where she was wearing that, it had to be said, was a little too distracting.

She had to notice it. Because he saw Chouji staring when she wasn't looking and he thought Shikamaru wasn't either. He saw Naruto look at his team mate's friend with some sort of face-smacked stare as though he had just read one of the novels Kakashi left to him. He saw Kiba staring at the creamy skin of her exposed stomach, and then have the decency to turn bright red when she raised an eyebrow and winked jokingly at him. She knew what she did, and she knew that she did it damn well. She had to know she was doing it to him on top of everyone else; because he was only human and just as male as the rest of the guys she seduced with that daring ensemble, her bright smile and her big blue eyes which she batted the lashes of very slowly and deliberately to catch even more attention. She knew she was a heartbreaker.

"Ino, grow up!" His words spilled out in a shout, hot and red with anger as he stared at her with charcoal dark eyes. The brown warmth was gone, and it was wrong. She looked upset. But Ino was good at masking things. It was her job. She hid all her lies and ugliness under a pretty face, all for the sake of her country supposedly. Sometimes, he just thought that it was that she found it easier that way instead. Because lying to yourself was better than telling the truth you didn't want to exist if it kept you remotely sane.

"Oh, so it's me who needs to grow up?" She screamed back, the natural heat she emitted gone. It was her job, he told himself. It was her job and he was getting way out of line. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't sit and watch her trick the entire vincity, not even once more. She was being used for her face. None of them treated her tenderly, whispered soft words to her or caressed her cheek as she slept. None of them listened to her breathing; none of them could take her at her worst. All they saw was the pretty face, and the weapon before they realised it was too late. Neither did he. But he loved her, he reasoned. That was enough.

"I hate these missions! I hate it when you do this! I hate that you won't give them up!" He shouted back furiously, and kicked the table next to him. The shouji pieces fell to the floor, scattering madly as though they were trying to run away from the thunder of their argument. He saw a flicker of change in her face before it contorted with rage once more, overtaking her softer compassionate emotions with the pure white fire of her fury.

"Well, what else can I do? You know I can't use long-range techniques most of the time, so I'm pretty much useless otherwise. Tell me, Shikamaru, how I can possibly do anything else?" She asked fiercely, her cheeks shining a bright red as she flicked back her fringe in agitation. Shikamaru blinked, shocked a moment. He'd never really thought of it like that. Her long-range techniques were the powerful ones that did damage. Close-range, what else could she use but mess-creating knives and fast-acting poisons? Her face. Or she could have relied on him, not that she'd want to. But he fought to find an answer anyway, anything that said otherwise. He shook his head at her with a sarcastic grin on his lips.

"You find a way. Summoning, swords, anything. Just not this." He replied, bending down to quietly pick up the pieces. His voice was lowered once more, but he doubted it would stay that way. Ino had fits when he was angry and she actually had (for once) done nothing wrong, and he couldn't say he blamed her but even so he couldn't help but be annoyed. If she spent more time on finding an animal or something like that then she wouldn't need to spend so much time in front of the mirror. But even so, Ino was vain beyond reasonable belief at times.

"That's rubbish, and you know it is." She snorted, turning her back on him. He could see from that little noise why Sakura still called her pig. Unless it was referring to her pig-headedness. He smiled at his own silent joke, trying not to laugh as she made her way towards the bathroom. She didn't close the door behind herself, as all she went in there for was to look in the mirror. He saw her examine herself, noticing the miniscule flaws of a too-thick eyelash and a lack of glossy lips which she quickly rectified.

"You know, your reflection is awfully pretty. It's a shame the same thing can't be said about a childish idiot like you." He snapped. She turned and threw the mascara tube at him, and it hit him square in the forehead. It was only then he saw her blinking back tears. Before he could say anything, she had already stormed out. He guessed he was going back to Konoha alone, and he could guess where he would find her when he got there. In a bar, drowning her sorrows. Or down some back-alley with Kiba or someone like that. Anywhere she received some cheap gift of joy.

Instead, when he returned home, he didn't find her anywhere like that. He searched the numerous stints in the slums where she could buy her cheapest drinks, found Kiba and Naruto without her and Kiba suspiciously still wearing his jacket, and she wasn't anywhere else hw could think of. It was only when he gave up that he actually unintentionally found her, back against the picket fence of her garden and curled into a ball as he walked past.

"Ino." He said her name softly. She didn't react, except pushing her head further into her knees. A pool of pale blonde hair shimmered under the moonlight as she moved, betraying the fact that she wanted to hide from him even more. Her hands were tightened curtly around her knees. She was shaking. The most terrifying thing was that he had been the person to do that to her. Reduce her to a quivering mess of used-up smiles and prettiness.

"I met you here once, Shikamaru. You called me a witch." She whispered. Her voice was cracking. He sat down with his back leaned against the other side of the fence, so their covered skin touched with a rustle of fabric. He didn't know what she was talking about at all. Even if he had, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Sure, there was that mess when they were twelve but she never mentioned that. Neither of them did. Then, it was just a stupid crush. Now it was more, and he was scared. But he'd never said that to her. Not then.

"I didn't." He replied dryly. He felt her shake her head in defiance, to tell him he was wrong. But he couldn't be. Because he was never wrong, he was always right and always making sure that she didn't do anything bad. He always protected her. When he upset her, it was by mistake. Never intentional. But even so, things never went according to plan and she was right once in a while about the little things. A lump caught in his throat at the thought.

"We were young. Do you still think I'm that ugly now?" Neither of them would ever know the answer, really. He hadn't said it because he thought she was ugly, but neither of them knew that. Shikamaru didn't even remember in the slightest, what had happened all that time ago. The Yamanaka memory had a tendency to remember more than average. Sometimes, that was what led to their downfall. He stood up quickly, and looked at the gulf between them. Really, that fence wasn't all that big. It never had been. With that thought, he stepped over it and sat next to her without a single complaint coming to mind.

"You've never been ugly. I've just always been childish." He said. She looked up, fresh tears leaving silvery trails on her cheeks. Ino didn't even seem to think about her next words.

"Yeah, I don't know why I love you." The words hung in the air quietly. She noticed what had slipped from her mouth with dawning horror. Her eyes expanded into a look of shock, her mouth slid open slightly and she raised a hand quickly as though if she covered her lips the words would crawl back in or possibly that way it would be like they never escaped. She stood up, her legs touching the back of the fence and stared. He looked at her, equally as spellbound by something she had never meant to say. She'd fallen in love with a man who acted like a child, who upset her because his love was thought to be unrequited.

But those words weren't skinned knees or cuts from prickly bushes they had hidden in whilst playing games. They were far more painful, far more adult, and far more forcing of that idea that he needed to grow up and take control of his life. He raised himself from the ground, and looked down at her. She was so little. So flimsy. So child-like. He was like that too, metaphorically speaking. He was the one hiding behind others and using childish words. But it was time to give that up. It was time to let go of childhood.

"I love you too." He grabbed her arms, and then kissed her. Children learn to grow up, sometimes. They do it for many reasons. For family, to protect others, to show that they can do just what anybody older than them can. Sometimes it is forced. In his case, it wasn't. Because Shikamaru would do it a million times over, just for her.

His reason was love.

* * *

Look, look! It isn't angst-filled! I do not want to grow up, though. I want to live in the pokemon world. It would make things that much easier. Also, not a lot of Chouji in this one. Any recommendations for stories about the big sexy will be much loved, he puts the awesome in threesome.

Reviews are loved. :)


	26. The Dreamer

Summary: _She'll stop dreaming about you_.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: Eugh. This is not my best work.

Playing **Theme Twenty-Six: If only I could make you mine.**

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**Honey**

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**_The Dreamer_**

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"I am a dreamer."

Ino said it cheerily, fully recognising the small fact and grinning about it like it was nothing. Chouji did not respond much, for that much was obvious without a statement. It always had been. She was the sort of girl who wished upon stars when she thought they weren't looking, who believed in good luck charms and magical happy endings but still smashed mirrors even though she thought it bad luck. She wanted a Prince Charming and castle, a thousand servants and love that would last forever. She wanted it all, and if she continued with her pipedreams and her glowing smile anybody would want her to have them.

"Aren't we all?" Shikamaru answered dryly, gathering up various projectiles she had embedded into the ground with forceful throws. It was hot, and her eyes were glittering, and he blamed it on that. Because sleeping was hard when Ino was around and being exceedingly loud, so he was making himself useful like she would want him to if she got the chance to nag. She looked at him bemusedly, eyebrows raised and beaming.

"I thought you were a sceptic and rationalist?" She asked excitedly, like her words meant anything. He tutted at her, wondering when she started to become an airhead. He preferred it when she at least tried to play strategy games with him, or gave Chouji a bit of help when he needed it in a reverent manner that could only be described as egotistical. At least then she didn't live up to the idea that someone on their team was a little illogical.

"Doesn't mean a guy can't dream." He stated, as though it were a simple minor detail. But Ino rarely knew when to drop a topic, and she didn't seem to sense the sensitivity behind his bravado because a smirk grew on her face that said she wanted all of the details. No information would spare from being dissected. A nasty habit she had recently picked up from Ibiki, that. He did not care for it much.

"What do you dream about Shikamaru?" She asked, the corners of her lips curling upwards cheekily. Chouji sensed the danger. His best friend knew the answer, and had since they were twelve years old. He would say he dreamed of an average girl, but really dreamed of anything but that. He would say he dreamed of having two children, but really he didn't want anyone to love the not average woman as much as he did. He would say he dreamed of retirement, but as he knew she planned to die before senility he wouldn't mind going out with her instead.

"Clouds, fields and silence." Chouji answered for him. Ino giggled, seemingly expecting something as petty as that. Really, if you were to dream, Shikamaru thought you should dream big. Otherwise, there would be no point in calling them dreams at all. They'd be whims, little unspoken wants which didn't have any licence to be grand and mostly unethical.

"I'm going to meet Kiba." Ino announced with a bright, pearly smile. Chouji looked to Shikamaru, who grunted in response. She seemed to take it as some form of acceptance. Truly, it was anything but that. Shikamaru had never disliked the mutt-rearing man, but recently he had been finding it hard to think of a reason to even so much as acknowledge his existence with a miniscule wave as he walked down the street. Then, Ino was gone. Racing away from the field, her blonde hair flashing in the sun to show where she had been with each graceful turn she made. He couldn't help but stare after her blankly.

"When are you going to tell her?" It was an abrupt question, but Shikamaru could not say he had not expected it. Even from Chouji. The kid with a kind soul needed this sorted. Being in between a rock and a hard place, or something like that. He could tell Ino and risk Shikamaru, or keep Shikamaru and risk Ino. Either way, it was not the best of situations.

"I'm not." Shikamaru stated. Chouji did not seem to register the answer, and pulled a pack of chips from his satchel. With a familiar popping sound as the bag opened, Shikamaru held out his hand, already knowing what would be placed in it. Sure enough, the food was in his palm and he opened his mouth that awaited the salty tang. The chip was ground up quickly between his teeth, but he could still feel Chouji's stare and it made him distracted from the task. Staring at inanimate objects might have worked a little better, he supposed.

"Tell me when you learn that some things cannot be avoided, Shikamaru." Chouji told him before standing up and brushing the dirt and clumps of dead grass from his outfit. Shikamaru nodded, though not understandingly. If he could, he would avoid it forever. Because his dream was something unattainable. Someone unattainable.

"If only I could make you mine, Ino."

* * *

"Hey, airhead?"

Kiba's question was not all that Ino had expected. She grinned back, and slung an arm around his waist companionably. He threw his arm around her shoulders with equal exuberance, smothering her in the smell of leather and dog. It was only then that they staggered on to the bench, with the grunts between them bordering completely nonsensical.

"What, dog breath?" Ino replied with a hint of tiredness in her voice. He moved his arm around and placed a hand on her head softly, a small gesture that acted as an attempt to keep her awake. She was lucky he didn't rise to the comment. She supposed it was because she hadn't reacted too much to his, but decided not to say anything about it.

"Why aren't we really going out? I mean, we're both completely hot." His words were slurred slightly, but she couldn't help but feel they were somewhat accurate. She knew she was the sexiest thing on two legs that Konoha had ever seen, and Kiba was quite toned. On top of that, although he hadn't said it, they were close and she was sure they had chemistry on some level. She could not help but smile at herself still however, as she knew even if she thought it really would be a good idea she knew it couldn't work. Not because of him, but because of her and her ridiculous fairytale ideas.

"Well, we're not like that. We're pretending, remember?" Ino giggled, trying to flippantly pass the idea. Kiba grunted, pulling her head under his chin. She could feel him bury his nose into her head a moment later, despite her whining that it would make her hair loose and untidy.

"Truth is, Ino, you're the only girl I'd want. Pretending or not." He rambled slightly. She wondered if he knew that he was speaking to her, but chose not to voice that part. She squirmed in his grasp, breathing heavily. He was too warm, and it had to be all down to the alcohol he had been drinking since two in the afternoon at the latest. Some fake date that was. At least she wasn't anywhere near plastered.

"That's ridiculous. I mean, you have Hinata on your team. Have you seen her boobs?" Ino hurried out the words, telling herself she'd apologise to the much more petite and somewhat large busted girl later for being so crude. Kiba growled, seemingly picking up the scent of a decoy. She was just glad Akamaru wasn't allowed in the local stints, because he would have bitten her for being so selfish rather than been so kind.

"I'm not interested in her. I mean, I'd be more like a replacement for Naruto. With you, I think eventually you'd realise I'm better than him." Kiba nodded sagely, and then moved his nose away from the tip of her head. Ino felt her breath hitch as he curled into a ball next to her, cupping his feet in his hands and burying his face into his knees. She touched his shoulder softly. Maybe it was out of pity. She couldn't quite decide.

"Kiba, it's not that I don't love you. It's just not the same thing." She whispered, knowing he could hear it perfectly clearly. His heightened hearing was good for many things, but hearing words of rejection was probably its worst effect. He shivered slightly, seeming to hear but not want to understand. She felt a lump of guilt building in her throat.

"Because I'm just a silver medal compared to Nara, and you've always been a winner." Kiba said, his words almost as hushed as hers. She felt the words as though they were a harsh slap across her face. It hurt, but what made it even worse was that his words probably hurt him even more and everything she was saying just seemed to make it worse. She bit her lip, trying to concentrate on the stinging pain. She couldn't cry. Not then. She was the one to ask for his help, to make Shikamaru jealous. To make him say it. Because a girl confessing did nothing, she'd learnt that a long time ago. But now, it was almost the same situation and she was cutting him up into tiny pieces with the truth. She couldn't be sure than lies would be worse, even.

"Please don't." Her voice was cracking. He turned, his still shaking and unsober voice aching and missing something she knew she had taken. Feeling. She had taken away his enthusiasm and confidence, whatever it was that essentially made Kiba who he was. He uncurled himself from his strangely childlike position, and before she could say a word placed a chaste kiss on her cheek with freezing lips.

"Some things, Ino, are worth waiting for." He told her, before stumbling upwards and beginning to walk away. It was only then she copied his position, though not through vulnerability but through exhaustion and fear. If she hid her face from the world for a while when she was young, it made all the nastiest things go away even if only for a short time. But right then, it wasn't working. Because she had always felt that about Shikamaru, even if she didn't feel like she could tell him. She couldn't tell Kiba she would always wait for him. She couldn't tell him that sometimes, dreams were futile. She talked to nobody in particular but his shadow, which wasn't even around to hear her words either. They were pointless and useless and meant everything, yet gained her nothing.

"I never wanted you to be mine."

* * *

"You never told me."

Chouji's four word sentence made Ino look away from the meat cooking in front of her almost instantly. He was no longer a boy, but a hardened man. He needed to ask something important, and she could see it in his eyes. He'd grown a lot. It was for that very reason that small amount of words put her on edge.

"What?" Ino asked cautiously, picking up her chopsticks before prodding the meat in front of her. She could probably savour the taste more if she wasn't in an uncomfortable situation. But she guessed she owed Chouji. He found her the previous night; sitting on the bench still in the same position after it had began raining. But he hadn't complained, hadn't whined at all and had picked her up and carried her home as though it were nothing. She couldn't turn him away right then. It'd be heartless.

"Everyone knows you're a dreamer, but you never told any of us what you dream about." Chouji mused. She would have kicked him, if she felt she could that morning. But she had clump of mascara on the tips of her eyelashes, eyeliner streaked down her cheeks and she was wearing a spare oversized shirt Chouji had leant her as a dress. On top of not wanting to be angry with him or have him angry with her right then, she was leaning gratitude and didn't want to look any worse in the frequented restaurant of her old team then she already did.

"Someone. Start eating, or I'm taking the last piece." She answered evasively. Chouji was not baited so easily. As soon as she moved her chopsticks to grab some more meat to prevent too much talking, his chopsticks snapped against hers to prevent silence. She looked up, slightly startled at the sudden and quick movement. His deep eyes bore into hers with such certainty and wisdom she felt like she had no right to even dream at all because he deserved it instead in return for all his kindness. Just like he deserved a proper answer.

"Ino, tell me the truth. You don't love Kiba, do you?" He shot directly. Ino choked even though she had not been swallowing anything, the stale air that had regurgitated in her throat coming out in a coughing fit moments later. People were staring. She wondered how Chouji could look as calm as ever, when all those eyes were fixed upon them.

"What would you say if I told you that's correct?" Ino asked, taking a quick swig from a glass of water the waitress had tactfully placed on the table the moment she burst into coughs before scuttling away. People really were touchy about getting germs, not that she had any. She was healthier than the average person her age. Her strict fitness regime saw to that.

"I'd say you're not even going out with him, and you're just trying to make somebody jealous." Chouji answered, his dark eyes sharpening. Just like those belonging to his best friend did when he was thinking too much. Hanging around Shikamaru was beginning to get to him. She liked it when Chouji wasn't being an inquisitor, and strangely abrupt. She had grown to rely on his gentle nature most of the time when he was around. She could feel her eyes beginning to sting, and unlike the previous night she wasn't sure she could stop the fall of salty tears from her eyes. She blinked them back stubbornly.

"Say this is all metaphorically speaking, what if I was trying to make Shikamaru jealous?" She said, the words slipping out messily. However startling they should have been, it was not Chouji they shocked. They hit her harder. A final admittance, an acknowledgement that he was the only one she wanted. Chouji didn't even look surprised. He must have expected it, must have known or something. The tears finally crashed out in the minute or so of silence, and she covered her eyes with a toned arm in shame.

"I'd say that's a good dream." Chouji answered, and Ino felt forgiven. For what however, she was unsure. She raked her fingers through her hair, feeling clumps of it curl between her grasp as if wanting to escape. But what from? The only thing she was ever running from was herself. Shikamaru would let her down gently, she knew that. But she wasn't sure she wanted it. If he hurt her more, it would teach her not to. Because love wasn't something she was ever sure she wanted to feel, if it made her do ridiculous things.

"Dreams don't always come true." Though who she was telling, she was uncertain. She had always poured over story books, knowing that she could never be the beautiful damsel in distress or princess that needed saving. She was born to be a fighter and not a lover, although she often wished it otherwise, and if she was ever in a desperate situation with her team she knew she needed to have an unbiased choice based on survival. She'd learnt at an early age that you could dream all you wanted if amounted to nothing that way.

"What's this?" There was a grunt as Shikamaru slid into the seat next to Chouji. Ino blinked back her tears and looked up, recognising the voice. Not that hiding things ever seemed to fool him. But he was tactful, most of the time. That being her operative thought.

"Ino's usual romantic dilemma." Chouji answered passively, in a calm voice which she supposed was meant to tell Shikamaru not to get involved. She thanked whatever was out there for putting Chouji on her team right then. Someone else could have had a bigger mouth and a far less kind soul that disliked waiting for things to happen. Shikamaru didn't seem convinced, and he always found some sort of interest in her latest problem. Probably because it amused him, in some twisted way. If only he knew.

"Oh, is this the Kiba thing?" Shikamaru asked, his voice sounding strained. Chouji and Ino looked to him, and suddenly Ino had a dreadful feeling that he knew everything. But he couldn't, otherwise he wouldn't have been late to meet Chouji. She would have left by then, too. She stared at him blankly, and it was left for Chouji to cut the silent confusion.

"What about Kiba?" He asked, and Shikamaru visibly recoiled. It seemed a soft spot, at that time, but she couldn't understand why. Kiba couldn't have said anything, he wouldn't have. Tempting a desperate woman such as herself would have been ridiculous, when he had grown up with such a clever and devious women as his family. Her eyes narrowed.

"Asking Inoichi for permission to marry you, apparently. Care to tell us why you didn't say anything about it?" Shikamaru's look was stern and cold. She felt her mouth slide open slightly in shock, wondering what was going on. She was pretty sure it had never even been mentioned in the slightest between them. The whole relationship was a lie.

"I can't believe people can bear that insufferably know-it-all attitude of yours, Shikamaru. Because I didn't know. But thanks anyway." She shot up from her seat, ready to run and see. Because if he actually was doing that, she wouldn't be able to stand for it. If you didn't stand for something, you'd fall for anything. She'd always believed that. This time, she had to stand up for herself. If she didn't, she'd never achieve her dreams. She grabbed the glass from her table, drinking the remaining water quickly. She'd need hydration if she was going to run.

"I can't believe I'm in love with you." It took a moment for Ino to register what he said. Shikamaru blinked, as if trying to understand himself. The glass in her hand dropped to the floor, smashing into pieces. Ino stared at it for a moment as the restaurant turned to stare at the commotion, and finally, their eyes met. Then, Ino was gone. Running, just like she'd always done. Because she didn't know how to do anything else.

"Go after her." Chouji said quietly. Shikamaru gave him a withering look, and prodded the remaining meat in front of them without any clear interest. Chouji stood up, glaring downwards back at his best friend. It was for the best. Shikamaru stared at him blankly.

"Or what?" He mused, looking upwards. Chouji shook his head, the message clear without words. Or, he was going to lose the best thing that ever happened to him without even trying to stop it. He swallowed the lump building in his throat. She'd ran. She didn't want him. Chouji smiled wanly, showing no true happiness on contentment.

"She'll stop dreaming about you."

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"Oi, dreamer."

Shikamaru's voice betrayed nothing but the fact that he had caught up. She'd ran so hard, ran like she never had before. She needed to stop whatever Kiba was doing, and she needed to get away from Shikamaru. Because Kiba would kiss her once and she'd try to forget how it felt when she had nothing left but it'd be futile. She'd still dream. She'd still love him. Her breath hitched, yet she did not dare to turn around. Her wooden door didn't show her his face, the gentle creases around his eyes or the rare winning smile he gave. The door couldn't break her.

"What?" She asked. One word. One question. One mound of nothingness. He'd never been hers to take, never been hers to hold, and he'd changed it all. She wasn't sure she could live with that, no matter how much she wanted it. Because love was just a word, and they were just friends – two good friends – and she was in over her head. She felt him touch her hands behind her back, and wondered when he had gotten so close to her without her even noticing.

"It was the truth." He said quietly, talking into the tip of her head. He was a lot taller than her. He always had been, with his gangly limbs. His legs were too long for his body. His arms were thin and wiry, snapping out at odd angles when he needed to catch things. His eyes were dark and brown, brooding and moody to warn those around him of storms. His hair forever remained a mess. She couldn't even understand what was so attractive about him. Maybe it was simply the fact that he was Shikamaru, and she was Ino. That the dream was meant to happen, or something like that. She had never been particularly poetic.

"I've always dreamed about you." She said quietly. His fingers slid from the top of hers gently, falling to his side without a single sound. She had always used those hands to make beautiful things. To put things together, to make sure everything bloomed into something beautiful just like the flowers she paid so much attention to.

"I'll take that as a chance." With those words, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her around before kissing her. Because he couldn't think of another way to say he was hers. Because Kiba could be stealing her right then and there. Because he couldn't give up on that dream of her, no matter how futile it seemed. Not when he had a taste of it. It was no longer a case of ifs. She had been his from day one, and she'd always dreamed about the same thing. They had yearned for each other without saying a word. So he said it.

"You're mine."

Just like in the best dreams.

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Shorter than normal, and not the best thing I have ever written. Forgive me, exams are murdering me little by little and killing al the creative soul and will I possess.

Reviews are loved. :)

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	27. The Aquaphobic

Summary: _Nothing he said would change anything. She chose whether she drowned or not._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I dislike this theme; it worried me a lot because I could not think of an idea for it for such a long time.

Running **Theme Twenty-Seven: Overflow.**

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**Honey**

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**_The Aquaphobic_**

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"Eight and eighteen are both very different numbers."

Shikamaru swallowed his words as Ino rolled over, exposing a mass of creamy stomach skin. He couldn't tell if it was because she really wanted it, or if it was just because she liked screwing with him. She gave him a faux-hurt look, and he saw Chouji physically recoil from it. She stared at him with large, baby blue eyes and batted her eyelashes with any hint of shame appearing to take her over. She repeated her whim.

"Share a bath with me!" She whined. He grabbed her arm forcefully, and shook half of her body with it to let out his rage. She still remained on the floor, grinning at him tauntingly. She had to be the most infuriating woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet. The most aggravating, whining, _troublesome_ thing on the face of the earth and yet she did nothing about her awful attitude. She needed to grow up.

"No." He refused her flat out that time, and it was easy to see she didn't like it. Her pretty pouted lips curled into a snarl, one that showed her clear distaste for his disagreeing nature that day. He might have held the higher rank, but she was the leader. Without any words being spoken, without leading them into any kind of fray, her whim was law.

"How can you say no? It's not like it means anything!" She growled. He stifled a laugh. She really was a piece of work, thinking such a thing. Her father would skin him alive if such a thing ever happened, and she would skin him alive if it did not. He could not win either way.

"Think about it, Ino. Seeing you naked very much means something in this place when we're old enough for marriage." He stated the piece of information as though it were the most obvious thing to ever cross his mind. Ino laughed, the tinkling sound filling the surrounding area with her clear malicious intent. She was not pleased. Any time she used such a sweet sound against him bad things had happened, and he had a feeling that this one event would be no exception to the pattern she had of ruining something or other of his. Like sleeping time. That had been good before she came along and joined their team.

"What does it matter? I'm the hottest girl you've ever met, so you couldn't really complain if everyone found out. Why wouldn't you want to marry me?" She steamed, flinging around her toned arms to exaggerate her point. Not that it was much of one. Sure, she was the most stunning woman he had ever come across when she wasn't caked in makeup and actually looked like a human. Other than her gorgeous face, she did have a brain, but she rarely acted like it. If he were married to her, he would go insane within three days.

"Because you're troublesome." He reverted to his old excuse. She screamed, flinging herself to the ground. He felt mildly sorry for the pain inflicted on the grass as she pulled clumps of it up, shredding it to pieces and flinging it around with her fists in fury. It was short lived pity however; as he'd rather that she wasn't injuring him in any way.

"You know what, I hate you Nara. You sure know how to crush a heart." She threw herself to her feet in the most ungraceful manner he had ever seen her use, spinning awkwardly in the air for a moment with her arms thrown out like she would fall again. It wouldn't surprise him. When she used such harsh words, it only seemed likely she would have a short but painful downfall due to throwing them around without really thinking about it. Even so, he knew that he would catch her if she fell. If he did otherwise, she would only be angrier later.

"You're hardly heartbroken. It's not like you love me." He breathed out his words calmly, rolling over on his side so he didn't have to look at her. She was pretty, a sight for any person that was to behold her, but when he used words like love loosely it never pleased her and a strange discomforted look always passed her face. He hated that look. It would make any man, even Ibiki Morino, squirm. When she gave it to him, it was even worse. His insides would freeze up with burning pain, with the cold flames licking through him like nothing he had ever felt before. She probably knew it, too.

"How would you know?" She challenged quietly, bending down and taking the cigarettes from the grass behind him. He immediately started moving to grab them back, but if there was one victory she held over him it was speed. Chouji said nothing, as always. Shikamaru couldn't expect him to, when Ino was involved. A packet of cigarettes wasn't worth being skinned alive, not even for his best friend. Not in any situation.

"Because you're Ino, and I'm Shikamaru." He answered, as though it were that obvious and easily thought of. Like who they were meant that things would never work. Chouji let out a strangled sound from next to him, a clear signal that Ino was about to explode or something to that effect. He rolled back again, and saw why. She didn't look pleased, but it wasn't with anger. She looked more upset than anything.

"Because I mean nothing to you, do I?" She whispered just so both of them could hear her. He was about to open his mouth to tell her otherwise, but there would be no point. He finally got it. Her aching voice, the slapped look across her face, the pain she gave out with every single small and broken movement. He hadn't meant it like that. She had to know it. She just had to. Instead, she didn't. She turned on him, storming off, leaving a painful silence.

"How long until you tell her?" Chouji broke the glass barrier hovering in the air between them. Shikamaru waved a hand. What was he to say to that? He could think of around fifty lies, each and every one of them worse than the next. He picked the most disgusting one, he knew when he said it from Chouji's silence resuming once more.

"What is there to tell?" He replied, longing for the cigarettes she had taken with her. They let him relax, with the scent of Asuma and the memories of a less complicated Team Ten floating in the smoke that made make him feel sick on many occasions before he'd taken up the job. But he'd rather not tell the truth, that he was afraid. Being in water, and seeing eyes so blue you could sink ships in them.

He didn't want to drown.

* * *

"You can't swim."

It's was a sudden, terrifying realisation. The water was gushing around them, and they couldn't walk on it when it was shoving them under. Her hair was drenched and rat-tailed, her makeup washing away and she looked so scared it couldn't be put into words. They were the only words he could say before the waves hit them, throwing them near the ocean they had crossed to get there. The Wave was still repairing itself, and it wasn't rare that ninja who could use water-based techniques were from there. So why had she accepted the mission? She had to of known that she could be in danger. A lump built in his throat, and he forced it back. He had to think of other things. Fighting an enemy using water-techniques from then on would be something to improve on, if they lived past the first one.

"I've never needed to." She replied, her voice nearing a pitch he would say meant that she was nearing hysteria. She shrieked suddenly, shoving him backwards. The sword meant for him hit the muddy ground with a squelch. Ino had gone in the opposite direction due to the force she used, and ended up near the very edge of the river bank. She was vulnerable, and he was close to the enemy, and for once in his life he was finding it difficult to think of a scenario where they would both live. If Ino went forward, they'd both be in danger. Backwards, and she'd be hurt. Sideways, and she'd be struck down.

"The pretty little Leaf girl can't swim?" The silver-haired enemy drew his large sword backwards, ready to aim again with a wide, shark-toothed smile. Shikamaru shot upwards, kicking him in the back of the knees. They burst into water, and he moved as fluidly as it, narrowly edging around his second enemy with almost perfect motions. The fear of losing Ino refreshed inside Shikamaru's chest. This guy did not just know their weaknesses. He could use them easily. A water man could drown her, and all three of them knew it. But there was distance between them then, and that could be of use if Shikamaru's mental calculations were correct. Ino stood up and steadied herself, clearly ready for an onslaught he would not allow by assuring look that she was trying to give him, although it kidded neither of them.

"Hozuki Suigetsu, we have papers pertaining to your arrest. Do not resist capture, or it will make things much more difficult for you and could lead to your interrogation." Ino said, her voice steady and loud in the empty space surrounding them. Shikamaru could have laughed. The guy had attacked them on sight; he was hardly going to listen to reasoning like that. Then again, reason was not ever a good thing to think would work on a missing-nin. But Ino always had done her job mostly by the book, apart from when she chose to forget things.

"Sorry, beauty. You and this guy can't possibly capture me. I have things to do." He said flippantly. It was only then that the shadows grabbed his ankles securely. The man struggled in the vice-like grip on him, even throwing down his sword. The shadow deflected, flipping up and capturing his neck instead. Shikamaru saw Ino's stunned look for only a few seconds before he looked away, staring at the back of the other male instead.

"I won't have you talking to her like that." He muttered. The man smiled, turning to water underneath his grip and sliding away. Ino moved towards Shikamaru quickly, but it appeared they had finally found somebody faster than her. He sprang from the ocean behind her, raising his hands out to her and placing the weapon against her neck as though it meant nothing.

"Tell me, do you love her that much that you would let me go so that she could survive?" His words were placid and calm. Ino had the same impassive look plastered on her face, but he could feel her mixture of surprise and fear from a mile away like he was an animal. The beastly side to all of her pretty features. Maybe that would be a more accurate description.

"Do what you will. One more death won't make you any less of a monster." Ino cut in, speaking for him. He bit his tongue, hoping to not make the situation any worse as she just did. Patriot. Ino was a stupid patriot. No mission was worth her life. Not for a small victory for her country. There was not one thing what made up worth with her being lost.

"If you insist." The answer said it all. Shikamaru lurched forwards and she fell back, crashing into the water. The enemy was gone, laughing at their expense and Ino was flailing madly. She was falling, slipping, sinking and he didn't know what else to do but save her. He jumped into the water, not caring how deep it was or if he went down too. She wasn't going to be lost. He'd messed up once, and he wasn't going to lose another person. Not again. Not this time.

He pulled her out on his back, soaked though and cold. She was barely breathing. He'd never trained as a medic, but hoped he could remember enough. He tilted her head backwards, and opened her mouth. He hoped in the long run it wouldn't matter, if she lived. If he didn't do it, she would stop breathing altogether and he couldn't let it happen. He breathed in to her, and then pushed on her chest frantically. Fifteen compressions. Thirty. Forty five. She was breathing normally again, but the fear still remained.

"You kissed me." She half-laughed, her voice croaking and her chest heaving and her eyes glassy. He looked down at her where she lay, battered and sore. He'd done nothing of the sort. He'd never been able to. He had just saved her. That was all. He had only saved his team mate. He could never tell her he loved her. If he did, she'd smother him. She'd trap him. She'd make him hers, and he'd never be able to say no. He'd never be able to live again. He didn't want to be just another one of her drenched, simpering puppets. He wanted more.

"No." He answered. He lent over slightly; placing a soft, chaste kiss on her lips before falling back and hitting the ground in a defeated manner. He ran a hand through his hair dejectedly, waiting for the moment when the entire situation came crashing down on him. They were dripping, frozen and wet and he didn't know what to do from then on. They'd failed the mission, sure. But it had been him who failed to love her enough.

"What was that then, Sleeping Beauty re-enacted?" She chuckled weakly, before lapsing into silence. He looked over at her. Passed out. What would he ever be able to say to that? She'd probably not even remember the incident, if he was lucky. Things could continue as normal. Swimming against the tide would cease. They would be them again, instead of almost lovers.

She would learn to swim away.

* * *

"We can't stay here."

Ino's statement hardly seemed to shock anyone. In fact, it only seemed to start time again. What his old man had said wouldn't be a lie. It was already going around. Danzo was the Sixth Hokage. He was a villain holding the position of hero, which they knew Naruto should have been allowed instead. Or Kakashi as his father suggested. Or anyone who even had morals.

"I agree, Ino. My father has been killed, and the Hyuga clan is in uproar. Many want a coup d'état. What else is there to do?" Hinata looked visibly frustrated. Neji stood behind her protectively, nodding at her words. It was only too obvious that the current situation could not be allowed. A man who wanted to spread war and hatred would only cause grief and pain to others, and a man like that should not have been in power. There was nothing more to say.

"If we fight through our ranks, it will never work. Danzo is likely to appoint somebody beneath him as the next Hokage without even consulting the decision. A fight might be the only way." The normally silent and well-spoken Shino contributed. Shikamaru agreed with him. There was never going to be the possibility of Danzo allowing one of the Konoha eleven to become Hokage, or even one of their teachers. There was too much threat to his power upon him stepping down to one of them, and he would never allow that. An uprising was the only way.

"That is true. But what do we learn from revolutions, if nothing changes? There will be many people like Danzo waiting to take his place as soon as he is eliminated." Ino stated. Kiba nodded in agreement, and his dog barked. Many of there small group seemed to see her point. They needed a way where they could be sure that there was no possibility of a dictated tyranny, and they needed to find a clever way of doing it. As if that wasn't enough, they needed to find a way to remove Danzo without causing too much uproar.

"So Ino, how is Ibiki doing?" Shikamaru cut in. She hissed, looking at him coldly. Naruto looked up on that from next to her, his blue eyes staring into Shikamaru's brown ones. If there was one person with eyes as shocking as hers, it was him. They were darker blue than hers, but they held the same stunning power that captivated those who surrounded them. Naruto just used that small strength differently to the way she did.

"We heard he lost two fingers yesterday, if you must know. But we're not out for revenge, are we? Because then we are just as bad as them." The male he so strongly identified as being her with a different gender always managed to do the same thing she did. Shut people up. Shikamaru chose to ignore it. He frowned whilst the others around them stared, waiting for something to erupt from his small comment.

"That is why I'm saying now that Naruto should be our leader." Ino spoke again. Shikamaru stared at her, shocked, but said nothing. She had always been a firm believer in the underdog, but to preach peace when people she loved were being harmed was hardly an attitude she had always held. Team Ten had hunted down Akatsuki members for their revenge. She had taken part in that. She had let Shikamaru find a way to kill the immortal. She let these things happen. But right then she was going against the very thing she had done.

"We're in a sewer network with a few supplies. So if she trusts you, you better be a good one that works fast." Shikamaru muttered to the other male. Chouji seemed torn between agreeing with him or with the others. But what was he going to say to that? He could see that their way was more logical, but it would be nearly impossible to do. Naruto smiled thinly, shaking his head. He'd grown a lot, too. He briefly wondered if they had grown because of each other for some reason, but dismissed the thought. It couldn't be like that. He had been right about Ino forgetting what happened on the mission that had been about a month ago, but she still remembered before that. She still cared about him. Even if she'd never said it since the first incident where she almost admitted she loved him, in her own warped way.

"I know. I have a plan, but it needs perfecting." Naruto grinned cheekily, his old self beaming out from under his new face. It was refreshing. Shikamaru smiled back, if wanly. He had nothing to say to that which would involve him not being dragged in to fix it. But he supposed it was ok, anyway. They were already traitors and plotters, so taking a hand in the ultimate conspiracy hardly seemed beyond them all. Ino seemed to know it. He nodded to her, waiting for elaboration on the smaller details. If he didn't get it then, he'd get them later.

"You, Hinata and Sai are still allowed into the village. We know that Danzo is keeping a close eye on you and the Hyuga clan after your father nominating Kakashi and Neji's little outbursts, so Sai is going to open everything for us to get into the main building. Tenten will then use whatever medical needles Sakura and Ino have, and any the rest of us might have in order to precisely pinpoint pressure spots to knock people out rather than killing them. After this, we will all advance into the main building and mop up. Naruto and Sakura will then advance to the main room using Sai as a guide, and remove Danzo. Konoha will then elect a new leader, which will be its hero. Therefore, it is likely to be Naruto." Lee explained, surprisingly much calmer than he usually was. Shikamaru could sense why. Youth was a fine thing, but it was slipping away and it was likely that his enthusiasm could lead to them being troubled by the discovery of where they were hiding. Not only that, but they hadn't corresponded with his mentor in days. There was a possibility that something had gone awry.

"What will we do about the guards at the gate and in the town?" Shikamaru asked, before catching on that he was supposed to figure that out. Ino moved away from Naruto, walking towards him and giving him a look he couldn't quite put into words. She grabbed his arm and began dragging him through the gunk around their feet, presumably to the room they had been using for planning. He was not mistaken. They lapsed into silence as they sat down, and she shoved some detailed maps of their plan in front of him. It wasn't surprising how much information she had gathered in such a short time. He'd expected it from her. What he hadn't expected was her to stay with him while he thought. Then it reached the point that he couldn't actually think, because he didn't know why she was even there.

"Why are you with me instead of them? You need to help them prepare." He murmured. She nodded slightly, not really agreeing. She seemed withdrawn, not really knowing what to do. He didn't like it. Something didn't feel quite right. Like he was missing something.

"I just wanted to see you one last time alone. That's all." She whispered, dragging her finger across the top of the wooden crate they were using as a table idly. That threw him. It sounded like she expected no tomorrow. Like something was going to happen that he wasn't quite seeing. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what it was, but whatever it meant scared him. She was the one to say they couldn't stay there. The one to hold this revolution dear. But it was like she wouldn't even be around for its culmination. Nothing he said would change anything.

She chose whether she drowned or not.

* * *

"Did they teach you to swim, finally?"

Shikamaru tried to make it sound like a joke, when he saw her again. She was chained to a wall, propped up and out like a dancing doll on a box stand. Everything about her demanded that she danced and sing, that she had to kiss and tell, but he knew she hadn't from the way she looked. But he's submerged in her anyway, and everything about her screams out and pulls him under every time he blinks before seeing her again. The cuts from fine water, sharpened like ice, screamed out from her body. They hadn't taken any limbs yet. He supposed he got there just before they tried to start scarring her to make her talk.

"You could say that. Let me out of these, will you?" She said, her voice cracking with the strain of each word. She'd probably screamed herself hoarse swearing at them and cursing them into early graves, rather than giving in and letting them see her break. She'd always been the one to destroy others without using animalistic techniques, and yet she had been brutalised. He supposed they needed to start using force with her. He removed the metal shackles from her wrists, and she collapsed into him. He eased her to her knees gently before sitting back and letting her slide into him.

"You didn't tell me you were going to try and save the interrogation department." He said quietly. She nodded into his chest tiredly, her eyes closed. He half-heartedly pulled some bandages from his pouch, to wind around her larger wounds. She couldn't heal herself then. Sakura or somebody would need to do it later for her. He didn't want to mess up and scar her or anything like that (like he knew he would) having very little experience in their field.

"You'd have stopped me. I didn't get here on time, though. Ibiki is dead. Killed him yesterday. Anko is in the next room, and judging from her mouthing off she's got some pretty nasty wounds but she isn't dead yet. Some of the interns have been hurt, too." She whispered, as he began to apply some salve on her smaller cuts. She'd felt like she failed. But she hadn't lost. Ibiki was one of many causalities, and she'd saved many just by turning up and causing chaos there. People owed their lives to her, but she'd lost the one she looked up to. That was enough to break her spirit more than anything else in her life had.

"You saved loads of lives. But how could I stop you? You'd never listen." He put the salve pot next to him, and hoped that none of the smaller wounds had started to go septic or anything like that. He didn't want to cause her any more pain then she was already in. From the look of it, it was already pretty bad, and he dreaded to think what state Anko would be in when Sakura dragged her out. Even with her medical help, he could imagine it being pretty bad.

"Even water bows to the moon. The smart, gentle ways of it shine on the water and that's what makes it beautiful. That's what controls it. That mesmerisation, that odd form of love." Ino whispered, and opened her eyes. He had always been so afraid of drowning in them. But her words made sense. In them, he saw himself. If he was what made Ino what she was, so be it. He'd always be there, making her more stunning than ever. A logical conclusion. He leant down quickly and kissed her, abandoning all thought after that. He could feel her tears slide down her cheeks, overflowing from her eyes and almost stopped to smile.

She was worth drowning in.

* * *

That last line sounds a bit disturbing. Or maybe it's just me? Finally, an update. You probably all want me dead. The theme is a bit out, and so it might seem a bit weird. But forgive me, I had exams and had to stop writing this a little way through because of them and then pick it up once more. So I hope the wait was worth it, even a little bit.

Reviews are loved. :)


	28. The Addict

Summary: _He is her definition of living._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: I had the idea for this theme for a long time. It is just wording it that I struggle with, because sometimes my ramblings come out incoherently and unable to be understood.

Airing **Theme Twenty-Eight: Wada Calcium CD3.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Addict_**

* * *

Definition:

Side effects; (a) problems that occur when treatment goes beyond the desired effect.

(b) problems that occur in addition to the desired therapeutic effect.

Example – the side effects of a large intake of calcium tablets can be constipation, stomach pain, thirst, dry mouth, increased urination, nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite.

_Or they can make you beautiful._

* * *

Shikamaru sees it once.

The pill rolls over the table as she furiously hits the brown labelled pot, sending it spinning in circles with no real reason to stop like somebody caught in an endless spiral. He finds it almost ironic, when he looks at her. But he says nothing. The one pill left is the thing that concerns him. It teeters on the edge of the table, not deciding whether to fall or not – and he finds it almost strangely symbolic of being on the edge of life – before he ends the silence as the damned thing finally hits the floor. It's new and favourite low, away from grasping hands.

"You need to stop taking so many of those." He whispers, as Ino looks down at it. Her face hardens as he speaks, her lips pursing into a thin line because _what would he know about wanting to be beautiful_ and she does not need to spill out useless words to answer that. She would anyway, but the cold dark look in her freezing blue eyes lingers and it says enough without her shouting like it would make a difference.

"They make me look like a model." She answers, the few words bordering on the corner of reason. He tuts at this, thinking how silly she is. He has never wanted people that have that desperate human need to be loved, and yet as pathetic as she is (and she is the most utterly useless thing he has ever seen in that sense) he cannot help but take pleasure in her company. He raises his eyes to meet hers, snapping his gaze away from the empty container.

"They make you look anorexic." He says without really thinking about it. He sees her snap, something changing about her demeanour. Then he thinks it, this forbidden thing, and he wants to say it but she gets there first with something trivial and cuts him off quickly.

"They make people want me again." She whispers. He wants to reply with a thousand, hundred, ten ridiculous little things but says none of them – because he doesn't know how and she's not the type to cherish small bursts of affection anyway, he reasons – and instead ugly words spill out. Words that hurt. Words that he doesn't want to say. Not to this hollow shell of an Ino, this thing that once was. This thing he wants, even if nobody else does. To him, it doesn't matter if other people care for her. But she doesn't want to be abandoned again, and he senses her fear in each and every moment in the air he breathes and in her goosebump-covered flesh when he touches her softly in public places.

"Where is the girl I fell in love with?" Shikamaru asks quietly. She slips off the stall she's sitting on and picks up the remainder of her meals for the past three months before placing it back in the pot. No wasted pill, no wasted beauty, no wasted Ino. Or whoever she was.

"She's gone." Ino replies tonelessly, without a second thought. The wicked curve of her new smile told him that long ago. But still it hurts to hear, and he wants her back again. With her old lively ways and stunning smile. He wants the way she loves everything, and everything loves her and there is nothing between them that needs fixing. The times when all they needed was each other, and not pills or magazine ideals she yearned for.

"I'll get her back." He decides it then. She's not too far gone, he tells himself. Because if there was anyone worth the effort, it was Ino. They were just some stupid prescripted calcium pills, and they couldn't be that hard to get rid of. They couldn't be worth more than him to her. He wanted to believe it so badly. A life, a dream, a smile. Because Ino was worth everything he ever had a million times over and if things were different she'd do it for him too so many times it would break her heart. He tells it to himself until his eyes cross and his mind is in tatters.

"Waste of time." She replies with no hesitation. He stands up, walks over and engulfs her in his arms. Because he doesn't know what to say to that. The troublesome woman is always worth the time. He'd pull down the heavens for her if she asked for it and name every star as she pleased then carve his love into the moon just to please her. Because each and every kiss fills him with something he can't explain, and he knows he loves her no matter what she looks like as long as she's Ino. He wants her back more than anything.

Wada Calcium CD3 tablets were made for calcium, so he reckoned they'd be good for bones from the beginning. He takes the last one, and she begs and pleads and screams – oh, how she screams – and keeps it for himself. Because if it could stop your bones from breaking, it might save your heart and everything else too. He mixes it in with a glass of water as soon as he gets home, watches it dissolve along with any self-worth he held then. He swallows it down. He feels sick. He sees what she means when she says it's a 'waste of time'.

He hates himself.

* * *

Definition:

Anorexia; a prolonged disorder of eating due to loss of appetite.

_It's not a disorder, it's a blessing. _

* * *

Ino sees it twice.

The smell of cigarettes lingers in the air, making her cough and choke as they sit outside the tent. She could think of a time when they made her reminiscent of Asuma, with his scent hanging in the air in the form of a dark cloud without the taste of the peppermint bubblegum he chewed afterwards to keep Kurenai happy. Her teacher had given her one once when she asked, and she knew Shikamaru still bought them. She's tasted them on his lips on his tongue and in his mouth; and cried those nights because of the resurfacing memories, not that he ever knows. Yet he carries on, as always. Yet he calls her weight issues a problem.

"You need to stop smoking so many of those." She tells him, her half-mockery of him cutting through the silence. She hates these missions alone with him the most for this first reason; his constant watching of her to make sure she wasn't 'pill popping' as he liked to put it. Secondly because although he says he's trying to give up (just as she should, apparently) he still stinks of smoke in the morning. Thirdly because for all his complaints, he still worships her every night in the tent, spreading her thin limbs like a goddess and loving her devoutly.

"They make me look good." He half-mocks back in a sarcastic tone she doesn't entirely appreciate. She cocks a finely threaded eyebrow, but doesn't snap. She's decides it's not worth it. Instead, she inspected her manicured fingernails carefully, suddenly finding them much more interesting as she mulled over his words.

"Why don't you want me to look good?" She muses weakly. Sure, they were just to help improve her bone strength, a prescription from the Godaime Hokage herself to help her toughen up a bit after missions where she had continuously had her bones broken each time. But when they could make her look so good, so like a girl off a magazine cover, why use them for that? They made her get rid of the things she ate, which were becoming scarcer with each passing day, when she took enough of them to make herself ill.

"Because I already wanted you as you were. Screw what everyone else thinks. You were the one who always said that, weren't you?" He spits vehemently, suddenly, and it shocks her to the core. He can see betrayal etched into every inch of her flawless face, in her aching eyes and opened mouth and hitching breathing pattern. It hurts him, but when her face is like that and her bones stick out at all the oddest angles and she's being just like her again he can't help but love her all over again so he expects that feeling.

"You're not the one everyone hates because of your supposed best friend." She says, without much thought going into the callous words. They come out harshly, and this is not her night but she's still smiling as he recoils from them. She knows she's hit a soft spot, because he's always talking about her problem like it was an addiction but he was the one giving himself lung cancer and at least she has some sort of excuse other than the memories she should have given up on six years ago. Because he can't answer to that, she's had the same thing happen because he was a teacher to both of them, and it's not an excuse because of that fact.

"So you think anorexia will win them over?" He suddenly counters coldly, and the words hit her as sharply as a slap to the face. She automatically reaches for her bag, tips out the mirror and sees her reflection. Then for once, she sees it the same way he does. Her high-cheek bones aren't beautiful. Her face is sunken in, hollow and deprived-looking. She lowered it and looked at her emaciated ribs standing out from under her short top, her twiggy legs and scarily pronounced ankles. She pales a moment, but convinces herself he's wrong. That she's right, that she's not doing anything wrong, that she's beautiful just like she wants to be.

"This isn't anorexia. I'm just thinner." She mutters, raising a hand and tracing it down her jaw line and feeling her chin jut out sharply. He supposes she still doesn't see the problem, and he's correct. She cannot see what is so sickening about the way she is right now, and she's intoxicated by the promise of being more stunning than anybody has ever been. She's in love with the idea of beauty, and in love with the idea of being in love and in love with him, even if she never says it. So why can he not understand her? Worry build in her throat chokingly.

"I can see you again. All Ino ever wanted was to be beautiful." Shikamaru replies, his words nearing silence. He could come out with a thousand gorgeous whispered words of praise for her, and he never had. Perhaps that was what led to this. Not Sakura abandoning her again for a statue of a man who loved neither of them and never had. He believed that sometimes.

"No, she wanted you to be in love. She's not coming back." He hears her refer to her old self in the past-tense, and it shatters whatever is left of the heart she claimed long ago. He'd been in love all along, even if he'd never told her. Even if he'd barely mentioned the word. Even if anything. He'd loved her more than anything – and in the depths of his aching chest – there was a part of him that still did, even seeing this monstrous version of what he supposed was once her. Or something like that, anyway. She was such a contorted illusionist it was hard to define the difference between dreams and reality.

"When was the last time you lived for yourself?" She questions. She drops the mirror to the ground, watching it smash into pieces. She doesn't care about bad luck, or things that go bump in the night. There is no magic in fractured fairytales, the remnants of life like her dead eyes and his breaking everything. So staring in the mirror and wishing to be the fairest girl in all the land would make no changes unless they suddenly stopped living like this.

"When was the last time someone made me feel this way?" He retorts, though not harshly. Then she looks up, and all thoughts are wiped away. He's beginning his second cigarette and not taking tablets like her, but she can't help it. Only one word comes to mind. Beautiful. A beauty she could never match up to. He was perfect, and he belonged to her once. When she was Ino. Some people said beauty was only skin deep, but they were wrong. Every time she looked at him after that simple inquiry, she could see it was much deeper.

When she gets home, she inhales before tearing open her cupboard and taking out the prescription and what remained of her addiction. She turns on the tap and lets it run over the paper and ink, removing any way of gaining the stupid calcium tablets and mashing the paper to a pulp to stop her from doing it again anyway. Then with a final, begrudging smile she went to the small bathroom her apartment had and tipped each and every pill down the toilet before pulling the chain. This was final. This was giving up. This was true beauty.

This was her love for him.

* * *

Definition:

Addiction; (a) compulsive physiological and psychological need for a substance.

(b) an instance of this being a person with multiple chemical addictions.

_No chemicals needed, __to each other they are the most addicting thing of all._

* * *

They see it together.

They're fading out, like hopes in the darkest moments and a heartbeat in the nights of the ancients with violet and black streaking their sight. Unable to see themselves clearly, and they're fading out without saying what they're missing once. Because it's just an addiction, an obsessive habit they can ignore for a day or two until they meet again. Once, she tries to figure out what it is that made her feel this way. But she only stumbles on her words, tripping over the things she doesn't want to tell him. The things they don't want to hear.

"What made us this way?" She whispers into his shoulder blades over and over, until her voice is hoarse because he doesn't know what to answer her with. Nicotine and drugs are nothing. He wants neither. What he wants is her, and the way her blue eyes sparkle and burn him. He's sure she's going to bring herself down, and him and everything around him with her, but he doesn't care. Not right then. Because he can't say each other. No, it's not that. Anything but.

"Nothing." He finally says, his words almost assuring. Almost true. Together right then they are a croaking mess – colliding only in similar heartbeats – and she makes him feel. She's got him brainwashed, and now he's more confused because nothing is just a word. Nothing is this pummelling thud in his chest, her fiery kisses and them. It's not true, it's just a word. But he'd say it over and over, if it would make her stay. He'd say anything. Do anything. Just for her. Because she's infatuated with loving and being loved, but with everyone else she's never managed to stay too long. She's not promising anything better than an addiction. But right then, she's enough and being with her is better than dying alone. Those are the fake reasons. Really, he just likes pumping his cigarettes full of her starry eyes and feeling her slip under his skin and he's addicted to everything that she is. Not that she'd ever hear him say it.

"We can't depend on nothing." She treds gently with her unusually soft-spoken words. Truth lingers behind the veil of her sentence; that in these cold dirty bed sheets in the abandoned apartment hidden somewhere off Kumogakure summarised by raindrops, cigarette smoke and the touches of each other. They are almost most comfortable in the arms of each other, pinned together by nothing in particular and dreaming. He is her definition of living.

"We can try." He whispers in her ear, her collarbone, in between kisses and her tears. She's given up smiling, and she's given up acting too – after wondering if fake smiles could buy her way into hearts, then gaining only his – because acting can't buy anything worth it, anymore. Except him, because he's always worth it underneath his complaints and her whining.

"Nothing only leads to nothing." She stifles her sentence as she laughs it out with a half-grin, the first he's seen since they turned twenty and he turns and leans his head into her chest because he can't tell her that pains him. The lows are worth it for the highs, he supposes, and his shattering is worth her smile. He reaches up to touch her moist lips with dry fingers, then moves once more to claim them with a quick kiss. He has trembling fears behind secrets, and she knows it, even if she pretends not to with strength.

"Then why do you want it?" He asks, without much feeling. Her eyes show nothing but sunny halcyon days right then, and he wouldn't want it otherwise. She smiles, flashing pearly white teeth and giving him a cryptic answer. He wouldn't expect otherwise.

"Because it's the thing keeping me alive." She half-lies with her strange form of a confession. You could never expect straight answers from Ino anyway. She wouldn't tell him that she wouldn't give it up even if the Hokage herself offered her far-off countries from gut-wrenching wars, like coins of gold and shimmering gems in her hand. He supposed something like that would be completely untruthful anyway. But the little things gave her away. Sometimes, when she put on her earrings and batted her eyelashes at someone she needed to for their latest mission he could see that she was intoxicated with being elsewhere because anyone could tell that she didn't really care for the target at all. Not that it mattered to them. She was pretty, gloriously so, and any girl with a stunning smile could make it somewhere even if she'd forgotten how to act because of a boy with kisses that felt like swallowing calcium pills.

"Do you love me?" He asks suddenly, his chest almost heaving and digging his nails into his fist under the off-white sheets. He leaves half moon scars on his hands in the morning, reminding him of it – and her sudden shocked expression when he looks back and she's looking away to hide her heart – and all of a sudden he can feel her almost not breathing.

"Do you believe in love?" She counters as she avoids the question. He reaches out to her again, tracing her jaw line with trembling words and dreaming that she was something burning like bleach coursing down the back of his throat with his fingertips rubbing away any doubt in her mind as he slid back into a small child with scraped knees that were so much easier to heal. Her fingers reach out in return, tracing hearts on his stomachs. Ghosts of truth, almost-there, never quite existing. Like them. It's not a question of love; it's a question of whim and addiction because she doesn't like the word and because he's right. She breaths narcissism and looks, he breathes addiction and cigarette smoke – and they're back at square one – even if neither ever says it. She's wearing the same poise as yesterday with a different tablet, and he's behind the glass like always, looking at her with blank eyes and lips without words. There is nothing to say to nothing, when he can't reply in the right way.

"You are my definition of nothing." He cries, tears sliding down his cheeks without any warning and he collapses backwards into her. She's waiting for his fall, and picking him up and treating her new addiction with more care than she'd treated any other one. It was obvious. He's never been just an afterthought, a toy, anything borrowed or unneeded. Not to her.

"Same here." Shikamaru tries to say it uncaringly. He can see the shadows beneath her eyes, the essence of himself in her blackened veins, in every shattered smile. He opens lifts the heavy lids of his eyes and kisses her lips, consuming all they were, and sees what she can. He holds her trembling hands and they see things together. The unsaid things, which would span centuries just to be spilt out from their lips over time.

They are addicted to each other.

* * *

_Then there is him, and her, and they are addicts._

* * *

This will be slightly confusing to most people still, most likely. But I actually don't mind the way it came out. I suppose it's a pit poetic. But even so, this is probably my favourite one of all those I have written so far. Even if as always, it may seem slightly out of theme. I blame google, which I used for research on the pills and their effects as well as various web dictonaries which I credit now for using. Point being to this piece, anorexia is not beautiful and smoking is not good for you sort of rolled into one. Also, it was a super-fast update, so I suppose my cousin (The Queen of Idiots, otherwise known as **Super-Sweet**) cannot complain.

Reviews are loved. :)


	29. The Princess

Summary: _Then her beautiful, glass, impossible fairytale went up in smoke._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: The penultimate chapter. I feel sort of sad about this series drawing to a close soon, it was like a nurtured child after the time I spent on it.

Flying in with **Theme Twenty-Nine: The sound of waves.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Princess_**

* * *

Then her beautiful, glass, impossible fairytale went up in smoke.

Life had been simple (when she was so simple) and all Ino had to do was look pretty. Everything would go the way she wanted. She was the type to become an overnight sensation, a lifeless shell of a dream – not that anybody would notice if she did – and yet even so, everyone is absorbed in her although she did not get her deserved victory. A rumour based on words that spilled through her lips, words she never said and some bored little freaks made up and her best friend didn't believe her. Ino deserves it all, she tells herself. She deserves the perfect life, she should be given everything which that little witch should not. But even though it's true and she prays for it over and over until her eyes cross, the day finally comes and the Prince she longed for the entire time was not hers.

So she smiles, to hide her hurt pride like a good doll should and waves a hand like it means absolutely nothing. The broken-hearted boy, so gorgeous with his dark eyes and sharp features had bore into her soul with a glance and a single word, with the most minute of kind gestures. He burns into her without ever meaning to. When he leaves, she says nothing. She expected it. You could never keep him caged, he was never truly a Prince. Building an entrapment around themselves – how strange humans were, she thought in that moment – that they needed to build up walls and keep themselves locked away. Only very few broke free in the end, but he showed her that you could never rely on who you were to redeem anything. That in mind, it was decided that if she ever saw him again she would not hesitate to kill him.

She didn't need anyone to ride in on a white horse and save her. She had Chouji, strong and unbreakable Chouji (seeing him so thin and frail is crushing enough to make her truly cry) and she had Shikamaru, lazy but well intentioned Shikamaru (seeing him hurting so and yet barely injured is enough to make her break down on her knees) and as long as she those two stunningly pure Princes with their kind smiles instead of the first Princes cold ones she thinks that she can do anything.

Then Sasuke comes back and slaughters Chouji without a second thought. Once again, the fairytale was shattered. She curls into a ball and arches her back and screams when she hears. Shikamaru holds her, but there is nothing he can do to stop the wailing. Eventually she passes out from exhaustion. Just before that, she gives up. There are no Princes, no dreams, no fairytales that are worth believing in any longer. Her smile cracks every time and her eyes dull but nobody notices. She begins to train until the point of exhaustion, slapping Hyuga Neji to get his attention once and attempting to mess with the mind of Morino Ibiki of all people. It's only then Shikamaru shouts at her to stop.

"Don't you want him dead?" She screeched, her lungs stealing whatever oxygen remained in one cruel swoop from her aching body and forcing it out with anger. He reached out a hand, but she jerked away almost as though she were afraid of his touch. There was no point in getting too close again, she reasoned. Anything she held dear would always be torn away. The hurt that echoed in his endless mahogany eyes was unmistakable, but it was not that what made her hate what she was becoming.

"If it will make you happy." He whispered in reply. She raised her hand to her arm carefully, deliberately, coursing her thumb along the soft flesh. She knew how he felt, she had since they were twelve. He was engrossed in her; in the momentary sparkle in her eyes over the little things, the hope in her thin smiles, each and every time she reached out to him with something other than friendship in mind if it was even for a night. He needed her – maybe he even loved her – but she wouldn't risk him. He was the only thing she had left to depend on any longer. He was embodied strength to her, and if he too crumbled she would not have a way to even stand on her own two feet.

"Will you say anything if I join ANBU to do it?" She asked. Assassination squad, murderers her father called them and told her not to get involved like he had long ago, and Shikamaru knew it. The skin around his eyes tightened considerably into small creases and he wore no smile. His tongue protruded and he licked his lips cautiously, creating a dull sheen that only made his eyes look even darker and more lifeless than ever. But what was she to say, when she probably looked the same as that? If not more jaded, her mind echoed.

"I could not stop you, could I?" He muttered, looking at her and wondering if the feeling of euphoria would ever come back. But the halcyon days of his childhood were growing ever more distant, and the child inside that had grown up so long ago had grown up too fast. She'd become a chunin later than him, spared her dreams of a fairytale ending until that time. He'd watched, absorbed in her pale shades and warmth of her smile and skin, drunk on everything about her. It was then when he had learned that he was not her Prince, and that nobody could possess such beauty. She was no Princess, although she possessed all of the required storybook qualities at times. She was a witch in the guise of something pure and innocent, and her tears for the Prince she wanted had been dried by the harsh air of reality. That Dragon had destroyed her, and Shikamaru was left with memories to burn in the enemies fire.

"So you'll just let me go?" She mused almost silently, her voice a blank canvas in monotone. She could give nothing away – nothing – because she was Ino and when she raised her arms and flung herself into a ridiculously dangerous situation she still managed to fly. She shakes the foundations of his world every day with mere actions and words and glances. She could save anyone but herself, and that had always shocked him to the very core. That's the very problem with this; it makes him think that all that he was to her was the voice of reason. But he didn't want to hold her back anymore. She didn't want to be a doll in a box. She wanted to be the Prince, the cold-hearted fool who would claim revenge as though it would bring their best friend back. Her room was windowless, and there was only one door. He knew his only option.

"Yes." Because Shikamaru Nara was not a Prince, and he did not know how else to answer something like that. He couldn't keep her trapped. He couldn't tell her it's stupid. He couldn't tell her he loves her. He has never been a Casanova, a Tristan to her Isolde, a Romeo to her Rebecca (because Juliet was always over-rated) and he certainly was not anything to her Ino. Nor will he ever be, he told himself on a daily basis. You could never love a Princess like Yamanaka Ino, it would only end in her smile. Then you'd be so submerged you could never learn to live again, and nothing she did would pull you away from her seducing spell.

It was then Ino realised life wasn't a fairytale.

* * *

Then his innocent, harmless, bewitched heart fell to pieces.

Life had been average (when he had been so average) and all he had to do was give up halfway to pass with flying colours in everything he did. He was the type to go unnoticed, a boy with dark eyes - they hid everything and for that reason he could never be loved, not by her anyway – and yet even so he was trying to do everything for once in his life and all for one simple girl who he'd loved since forever. He doesn't plan on coming out victorious, because she doesn't plan on coming out alive. For that reason, when the Witch Princess breaks his heart over and over he just picks up the pieces and runs back every time. Even if he did not expect to win the next day, the next week, the next month or even the next year he felt that one day when she was tired of everything but him the impossible could become possible.

When she succeeds in destroying the broken-hearted boy, so gorgeous with his dark eyes and sharp features (so like the perfect fairytale Prince) Shikamaru laughs. Humans built homes around themselves, built cages that he had escaped with his abandonment, and yet he had not been able to escape the age old trap that was womankind. With that in mind, he looked into the tired eyes of the fallen Prince and smiled companionably as he was taking his last breath of the hazy dream that was his life.

"Was she really worth it?" Shikamaru asked, taking a careless drag of the cigarette dangling in between his fingers. He didn't really care that it would be the last smell that Sasuke would be able to distinguish, instead of the scent of flowers and vanilla shampoo that went with Ino. Shikamaru rarely captured that scent any longer. Ino hadn't been around for months at a time, working with Konoha on some ridiculously dangerous mission that she'd begged for. Make Sasuke Uchiha fall in love, and then kill him. Under Danzo's orders, of course. Their parents hadn't been pleased she was taking any task on from that dictator, and if they knew what it was he cold only imagine the worst case scenario. Even so, she'd managed it somehow. The Dragon had fallen in love with the Witch Princess, and she'd destroyed him without care.

"She's Ino. Of course she was worth it." Sasuke said in his cracking, rasping croak. His fingers curled open, revealing a small gold thread. This man was truly unhinged. He could have destroyed her without even trying, and as much as Shikamaru hated to admit it that much was certain. No matter how much she trained or pushed herself, no person but Naruto could ever reach his level. The only thing she could possibly match was his speed and genjutsu, and by that logic it should have been her laying half-dead on the ground instead. But she had done her job well. Even knowing that she was about to kill him, the only thing the man who had once turned her away so cruelly was able to do to fight back was tug away a strand of hair. He could have done so much more. Sunk his teeth into her thighs, ripped at her lips, torn under her skin with his nails to feel like she was really his. But that one strand was all he took, and it was all he would ever possess of her. That was what shook Shikamaru. That he could never own her. She could never be his.

"So you'd do this again?" Shikamaru cackled, his words like that of a dark magician. It was a gargantuan task to imagine that he could be so cold. Many perpetrators of his life had tried it over and over, and never quite achieved it. But Sasuke did it with his next words, without even trying.

"Over and over, until she really loved me." Sasuke breathed. Shikamaru vaguely recalled not even counting him as a friend, but in that moment he felt more pity for the creature that he had become than he had even touched upon for any other human being he had ever encountered in his short life. Sasuke's breath hitched, and there was a short spasm before his obsidian eyes became unfocused. Out of some sort of strange form of respect, Shikamaru lifted his hand and slid his eyelids neatly shut. It was only then Ino crept out of the bushes, and crouched next to him, looking at Sasuke's lifeless face blankly. She had caused it, and yet she could not react to it. It was almost as though she really were the dead one in their relationship.

"He was a cliché. A stunning cliché. But a cliché nonetheless." She whispered dryly, reaching out a hand to stroke the strong angle of his jawline softly. Her fingers traced over the pale skin, and he clearly still held some warmth under his skin for Ino's hand never lingered in one space for too long. He supposed it was true. His final words were the stuff of heroes in films, and the way he fell for her was overwhelmingly boy-rejects-girl-then-falls-in-love storyline. Even his perpetual cracked beauty, the way his lips were parted slightly and still the palest pink even in death, his startling raven hair fanned out as if to make his features almost angelic. Everything about him seemed cliché. Beautiful, but cliché. The question was if Ino wanted that, or if she meant the slight vehemency for the word he could hear in her voice.

"Isn't that what you wanted? A fairytale cliché?" Shikamaru asked, his eyes stuck on her hand as it slipped over his features with the slightest fluid movement. Everything about them would have been so wonderfully cliché it hurt. He was fire and lightning, she was water and earth. He destroyed life, scorched the dirt to ensure nothing could grow. But she was forceful and she never gave up. Even in the harshest conditions, she tore up and insisted on living and growing until there was no stopping her. They were parallel, with little in common but a pretty face a hence it was so that they would make the ideal story for some little girl.

"I don't believe in fairytales anymore. You of all people should know that." She told him indifferently, finally snatching her hand away from his face and leaving a small cut on his chin with her nail. She was carved into Sasuke indefinitely, and nobody would forget that she had been his downfall. That much was certain. But even that could not prevent Shikamaru from taking her hand right then in some broken half-form of comfort. Nothing would. Because she just needed to know he was there. Just as he had always been.

It was then that Shikamaru realised he believed in fairytales.

* * *

She didn't want to be a Princess.

That had been her ideal once. She wanted to be someone who everyone knew, someone who went out with a bang and in style. With a loose glass slipper still on her tiny cheating foot, eyeliner smudged and streaked down her cheeks like a crooked gone haywire model, the pea beneath her mattress finally disintegrating so nothing could harm her. She wanted to be untouchable, and only whatever out there knew she was. Girls wanted to be her, boys wanted to be with her, and he just wanted her to see she could still have the life she had wanted since the age of six when her father read her fairytales.

"I want my romance to be truly unique." She told him, forcing certainty into her voice and snatching the cigarette from his open hand to take a long drag. He chose to say nothing to her action, although she was the one always complaining about the smell and how it would kill him one day. If he lived that long, he was never cold enough to answer flat out to her face. He shrugged instead, thinking her desire stupid.

"No romance can be unique, with the amount of trashy novels you read." He muttered in reply, stealing his daily nicotine fix back quickly and shoving it between his lips when she turned on him with a stubborn glare. She needed to learn not to take things that didn't belong to her, she was becoming a thief. There were only so many bad things he could think to call her, and adding that to 'Witch Princess' didn't fit at all so she needed to sort things out really. Not that he'd say that to her face, she'd smash his nose before he could even explain the name he had given her. Things like that weren't replaceable, he reasoned.

"Well, I don't want a trashy one then. I don't want the kiss in the rain, the sound of waves as I make love on the beach to some random hot guy, the tall dark stranger, the ever redone best friends become lovers plot, anything. I want something new." She insisted, stamping her foot down firmly on the concrete as if to make her point. The exhale of air from her tiny body next to him almost made him jump. The strength of the force she used as of late was becoming increasingly erratic. Naruto had been on the receiving end more than once, and as funny as he found that, he wanted to see Sai getting punched in the face rather than him. He edged away a bit towards the lamp post down the road. If she noticed, she said nothing, but the small burst of anger from a smaller body soon removed all traces of its very existence.

"So I suppose some crappy form of romance like you and some guy would consist of stumbling around towns after drinking too much and stinking of ramen that he's thrown up, while you both see pink elephants or something else ridiculously unimportant, and then calling something like that love?" Shikamaru rushed his words out, as if to make his point. She could probably see that her notion of a completely original romance was unheard of, or that it was just idiotic to even think of such a thing. He wondered if she even dreamed of someone kissing her after she threw up in the gutter, or something like that. He shook his head. What a silly girl, to think such a thing was a relationship that would last. She didn't even need to say it and he already knew that was one of the many things she had in mind.

"You're expecting me to kiss him under a lamp post that smells like dogs mess or something? Seriously, Shikamaru, have just a little class." She's always been one to fuss. Of course the idea he thought of was impossible for her. Although she wasn't holding on to fairytales, she was still a beautiful woman and expected to be treated as such. He waved a hand at her casually, dismissing that he even entertained the idea. If she knew that (which she probably did, judging from the disgusted look she was giving him) then she would probably do something even worse than he could imagine in three hundred and twenty situations.

"Wouldn't the best part be that nobody would know who you are?" He tutted, as if disgraced by her behaviour. In every story, the girl always ended up important. Well-known, famous in some aspects. Be it due to the popularity of her boyfriend in the classic geek meets popular rubbish, the boy she met really being a rockstar or something equally as impossible, or because she was the newest Dowager Princess in the Princes line of wives. The selling point of each and every story was that the girl ended up well known, or she was already well known and became more well known for her exploits. When he thought about it, what it came down to in the end was a focus on the female lead to target the main group of readers of such crap.

"I suppose that would be the biggest plus of all." She threw her hands in the air, spinning them in aimless circles from exasperation. He smirked. She could never have that. Everybody knew her name. She was the popular kid, the one who got whatever she damn well wanted with a pointlessly blown kiss and a wink of her spiderweb eyelashes. It often chilled him to think that somewhere in another country, somebody was looking at her pretty face in a bingo book and seeing the huge bounty on her head as a reason to slash her pale skin to ribbons. Anyone could get information on her in Konoha because anyone could tell you who she was or where she had been, and they'd do it without even thinking. So for her, dreaming of not being renowned was something almost impossible to even think of doing.

"What if I told you that you're going to end up with the biggest cliché of all?" He asked, looking directly at her. She froze a second, but shook her head. Like she'd know. She was going to be his, he had decided in that moment. She was something amazing, beautiful, completely and utterly troublesome – and it was strange for him to think this for those reasons – but she was just what he wanted. He'd said he wanted an average girl, an average family, someone who he knew would never leave him. But right then he wanted the best friend romance, the gorgeous girl, for everyone to know who they were. He was the top strategist around, and she was the best protégé of torture and interrogation Ibiki Morino had ever seen. Together, he knew they would be something so beautiful it'd hurt. Then she said it.

"Then I'll never fall in love." She told him defiantly, fire burning in her eyes. The promise to Asuma forgotten in a sudden instant. She didn't need love. She needed to find something akin to it before her rival. She would get it, too, if that was what she wanted. For as soon as she said it, Shikamaru felt tingles run down his back. His normally slackened stance became immediately straightened with shock, and he stared at her coldly.

"So you could never fall in love with me?" The words slipped out harshly, and Ino looked at him as if confused. As if she never knew. In some other life, he could have believed it. But it was too hard to hide anything from her. She knew all that she wanted to, and she could take anything from under your nose with or without intention. She had to know.

"You love me." She whispered, raising her hand to meet his cheek slowly. She'd done that to Sasuke, too. With that in mind, he immediately snapped his head back and moved away from her tender touch. The pain in her eyes was unmistakable, but there was nothing else to do. She was an actress. Everything about her was trained. Her posture was immaculate, her makeup perfectly done, even her scent was made to seduce. Everything about her was made to trick and fool. He'd been the biggest idiot of all, to believe they could actually have a fairytale. To believe in her.

It was then she realised that she didn't have a choice.

* * *

He wanted to be a Prince, once upon a time.

When he thought that she could actually live in fairytale, and that he could do it for her. He had thought they could lead a life without any more arguments, any smashed plates or broken words, or anything she wanted. But since that one moment, he had tried to believe otherwise. He had been in bed for two days, wondering when he could feel like living again and thanking whatever was out there that he had his own apartment. At some point, he knew somebody would come along with a mission or something one day, but until then he wasn't going to move. Eating wasn't worth the time. Washing would be pointless. Nothing was worth it right then, nothing but sleeping. Or her. But she wasn't going to come and save him. The banging on the door only made him get up after six minutes had passed, and he knew it wasn't going away. He didn't even think about answering the door, and when he did he almost slammed it in her face.

"Don't you dare, Nara Shikamaru. Open this door or I'll break it down." Ino hissed, the wood connecting sharply with her knee. A bruise would form there later, but he didn't really care right then. Her pain was no worse than his, and he cared more about his door. That was what he told himself when he questioned why he let her inside in the end. He didn't want to pay out for another lump of oak, it was too expensive.

"I don't want to see you right now, Ino." He told her darkly as she danced past him into his kitchen, filling the kettle and switching it on without seeming to care much how much he looked like he wanted to hit her right then. She busied herself in the kitchen without much thought, putting tea leaves in the strainer and flicking her hair behind her when it dipped down and almost got caught in it. Everything about her was too at home, and too relaxed. He hated it.

"Well you stink. Take a shower then complain." She flippantly replied, continuing in what she was doing. He growled lowly, darting towards her and grabbing her wrists. Her pottering around made him feel sick, it was so trivial compared to what she had done to him. He leaned in next to her ear, whispering into it with warm breath and a cold expression.

"You're one to talk. I'm the one who stinks? You may not smell bad, Ino, but you're the one who's heartless here. Not me." He said. She flinched at the words, opening her hands to drop the teapot. The metal clang struck out harshly in the quiet apartment, as if to replace the noise of laughter that the silence could have been filled with instead in an ironic way when he thought about it. His words hurt, but she hurt more.

"I don't want to love you." She whispered. It was then he dropped her wrists, moving his hands to her neck instead. He could strangle her so easily. She'd die a patriot to the insane, off the walls shinobi. Everyone would know her, and by the logic of such a place she'd be a hero. It'd be easy, he thought. He knew she'd never stop him. But even so, he couldn't bring himself to do it. His hands hung loosely around her neck.

"But you do. So stop." He said to her, his hands moving faster than flowing liquid. He spun her around and crashed his lips on hers messily, and as she gasped for air, ripping away from him he stopped her and returned back to her enticing lips. He supposed she got what she wanted in the end. This was the strangest form of romance he could think of, if it could even be counted as that. She was right. She didn't get a cliché. She didn't get a fairytale. She got her own version of a Prince, in a kitchen after he said too much.

But the happily ever after was good enough for him.

* * *

I expected to badly miss the deadline for this and not be able to complete this (see my comments from earlier today on the Naruto Hated Pairings forum, under the topic ShikaTema) but thanks to awesome male Jill, also known as Conor, fixing the wonderful laptop Wizard I am able to finally post my updates. Many thanks to him for that. Also, only one more chapter to go! God, I feel sad.

Reviews are loved. :)


	30. The Kisser

Summary: _After thirty kisses, he loved the taste of honey._

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Note: The last one. My precious baby will be setting out all by itself, and I shall be creating a new project and continuing my drabble series of the now. Yet even though it shall be gone, it will remain in my heart as a project that helped me greatly advance my writing skills (or something to that effect, I hope) and my lovechild. In not so many words.

Finally, finishing up with **Theme Thirty: Kiss.**

* * *

**Honey**

* * *

**_The Kisser_**

* * *

He kissed her once.

When they were fifteen, the time when she was tragically beautiful and beautifully tragic all at the same time. The days when perfection was a purple top and his pair of ripped trousers from training that morning. But she was more than a smile and a heartbreak and a dream. He knew only this about her: she was more than that, much more.

He's always known it. Because when they touched her fingers went under his flesh, because some things were better than skin-deep and he couldn't help but think about it every night. She was bright and glorious, so glowing that it burned his eyes until her radiance reflected on him and made him stunning too. But she'd always been brighter, brighter than a hundred-thousand-million of his lights or anyones. She was too good to not be more than this.

Even when Chouji shouted hate, and her hands were mountains away from him, he awoke and could taste the sweetness of it all. It soon evaporated, bitter on his tongue, but he could still feel the saccharine drug of life she gave to him. It was fading, but it could never be forgotten. Like Chouji's large hands, closing on her arm and her turning and smiling. Was she still, one year later? Yes. She was always more.

Even though she was not his to have, he folded the memory like a faded photograph and imprinted it in his mind. He didn't call her for a month, didn't show his face at training, and when Chouji turned up at his door smiling he tried not to take it personally. He also tried not to laugh when she broke up with their team mate of sorts, but that time he succeeded. Some things were better left unheard. If there was something he'd learned by then, it was that wanting more just made you bitter. You could never have more.

But still, he'd kiss her again.

* * *

He did the next day.

"We'll make forever." She whispered, tears filling the eyes anyone could drown in. She wanted him, she did, and he knew it – but she didn't want forever, she never would because she was Ino and not some kid who'd settle down easily – so her words were meaningless. There was no forever with her. No holding her and hoping if you did it tight enough, she wouldn't run away like a startled pet and love someone else.

"Someday." He replied, noncommittal in his head. Her words were a loaded shotgun right then, and anything was poised to kill. She could smile at Chouji all she wanted, and his best friend could hate him for however long forever was in their time, because the butterfly boy had never grown up and just told her he loved her. The world was young, and they had everything to lose. Words wouldn't change that.

"Then let's say that we'll make it. Somewhere. Someday." Every syllable she pronounced was almost breathless. She lived in ghosts of will-be, and he lived in ideas of could-of-been back then, and he supposed that was why they never saw eye to eye. He patted her head; kissed her lips a third time and tasted honey thinking she'd forget before he reminded himself of such an idea. She knew he didn't believe in forever, it was obvious when she said that. But even _somewhere, someday_ was a bit of a far stretch. Probability dictated they wouldn't make it past twenty three, and their fathers were all either just extremely lucky or failures.

Chouji didn't make it to seventeen, let alone twenty three. It was then that Shikamaru realised that Ino was like honey. Her taste was too sweet – saccharine, even – like she was trying make up for something. Then he grabbed her skinny wrists as her long fingers tangled in his matted hair, held her close to him and leant in and said it.

"We made it, and this should never have happened." His voice cracked. She broke into him. Her head bowed like she was an animal. She curled into his chest and sobbed. They were a disaster waiting to happen, and that moment was the sharp realisation that they had lost one of the things they loved most because of it.

"You always make me cry." She snapped, as the mascara streaking down her face began to cake itself unto her skin. He let go, rolled over and pressed his face into the trusty old plain white pillow he'd grown accustomed to. Yeah, he supposed he did back then. But he never promised to make her happy. He never promised that he wouldn't leave her. He never promised that he wasn't actually quite like Sasuke, leaving the big things behind when thinking them little and not knowing that he loved them. Promises were for people who dreamed. For people who could take the taste of honey.

But she kissed him again the day after anyway. He never did have the ability to turn her away, and he let her trail down his jaw with her tongue in some new form of comfort that he supposed was somewhat worth it the week after when Kiba threw a glass at him and told him that he was making her sick. He thought he deserved the pain, letting his best friend die and doing that to Ino, of all people. She was in emotional turmoil, and so was he, but it was no excuse and it never would be.

But kissing her back was still worth it.

* * *

The fifth time it happened, he failed her.

He knew that sometimes, she forgot to brush her hair or how to smile or what his name sounded like. Then he didn't believe in her anymore, he believed in something else that she has been like other broken minds like some girl called Ami who killed her sweetheart or that guy from interrogation who was leaking information or some little silly insignificant thing like that because she threw her head back and laughed like them. That was when he realised that he too was losing little pieces of himself to her.

"Save him." She whispered, her voice hushed like the sound of raindrops hitting the ground in a thunderstorm. It was tiny and insignificant. But it was never him who she was begging for, and that whisper crashed loudly down like a downpour on everything he was. Then his heart, drumming slowly, asked him without words to give up. Agony slipped across his body with each breath, and he briefly wondered in that moment if that was what it felt like – to be in love – but then he knew that it was a ridiculous notion because with Ino there was no such thing. Not with him.

"We both make you cry, don't we?" He asked, breathing hazy grey smoke out as he said it without much emotion in his voice despite the nonexistent cracking he desperately wanted to hear aloud. He felt like a savage in the rawest form when she flinched, a jolt echoing through her body sharply and her eyes widening painfully like translucent circles, never quite seeing him there. They were something, sometimes. But whatever they were wasn't love, not to her, and the one she wanted was not him.

"I've never cried for him." Ino told him sharply. He knew that there was something beautifully honest and prideful about that arrogant tone, and he knew that she was telling the truth, but even so, he turned away from her coldly. He'd ask Team Seven and he'd do it for her. He'd ask to be the one to slit his pretty damned throat. Just because doing it for her would be the highest form of indulgence, and he could hide behind messing up before and everyone would think it honorable. But she'd know. Even if she never said it.

"Then why are you messing me about?" He snapped. Ino reached out and smacked him harshly across the face, as it were all she could manage. He was pretty sure he could see her eyes watering, but she was biting her lip and forcing back the tears. Not for Sasuke, she wasn't crying for Sasuke, and she hadn't even done it when he left them behind. Then, she had cried for Sakura and Naruto but never herself. When Kiba told him he snapped at Ino for crying later that day, he couldn't say anything. Because Kiba had thought it was for Sasuke.

The apology turned to ash on his tongue when broken, battered, beaten Uchiha returns on Naruto's back with a smashed spine, and there was an odd peaceful look about both of them like all the suffering meant nothing. When he saw Ino visiting the dark haired one in hospital, watching his sharp angled face attempt some awkward form of what might have once been a smile before pressing his lips softly to her forehead for seconds until he collapsed back into waves of bedsheets he regretted not talking to her for a while. But he'd never mention it. Not even if she pleaded him to see her again. When he noticed her looking out the door into his eyes blankly, he retreated. He could tell her on the day she didn't come for him. He will see her off in the very last moment, fingers drumming on each others souls, and that is something the Uchiha cannot do. The Uchiha cannot proclaim anything for her.

She still turned her cheek to his next kiss.

* * *

She kissed him the eight time.

The ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth too. Sometimes, he wanted to go to her apartment and rap on the door until his knuckles bled just to see if she would open it with bloodshot eyes at three twenty three in the morning to see if she was awake and thinking about him at the same time when he was sitting bold upright on the sofa thinking of her because there was no chance of sleep with her in his head.

"I love you." She told him, banging on his door at exactly five in the morning after a week of this ritual. Her voice was weak and tired, and worse than his. But that was the day he stopped cutting his hair, stopped moving things and slept in the same position because change began to scare him. His dark skin started turning pale from not eating, though it never became as startlingly white as hers. His eyes never met people. He saw Asuma, Chouji, Sasuke and loss in everyone and he hated it. She made him ill like that. She made him sick.

It was then she stopped wearing cheerful purple, optimism screaming from every fibre of her body. For him, Ino started wearing black. He was as good as dead to her, and promises that he did too even though he couldn't say it could be made on steeples and arches and churches as many times as he saw fit, but they would never be kept and he knew it.

It was then he knew he was living for other people. It was then that he left the house at three twenty three in the morning on the eighth day, with the tips of his hair soaked in herbal tea and with blood on his scraped elbows just to stand outside her apartment and shout until she slammed the window open and glared at him like she meant it. If she did, she wouldn't have opened the door, wouldn't have let him sleep by her side, hand=in-hand like five year olds, never quite intimate as it could have been.

"Sorry, I forgot where I was." He said when he felt her stir in the morning. The pillows shifted under her heavy head, and her hair spilled over to tickle his nose and in that moment she could say anything and he'd stay there just for her. Because she was worth more than false promises, fake pretence and something that was never quite altogether that slipped into his words when she was around.

"I forgot you were here." She smiled, her words not meaning to be cold. Then one last movement and she was sitting up in her crop top and tracksuit bottoms from the night before, and he wanted to come to life again so he stops and stares at her with something akin to warmness in his voice, or so he hopes at least, and when she flinched under his gaze he hoped it showed it meant something to her more than just love.

"It's fine. Sometimes I forget I'm here, too." Shikamaru whispered. In the pregnant silence that followed, she went away and returned with a pair of scissors then yanked his hair and lopped it off unevenly back to shoulder length. He fed himself some of her terrible cooking, and then noticed he was eye to eye with her just a few minutes ago. When she watched his movements afterwards, he stepped forward; pulled a bright purple outfit she'd long forgotten from her wardrobe and pulled it unto her limbs like she was his personal mannequin. Then for the first time in a long time, they smiled at each other and he laughed so hard for no stupid reason so hard it made his eyes water.

He kissed her the thirteenth time right then.

* * *

Fourteen kisses and he still couldn't say it.

A cagey, rattling breath that meant she hoped he remembered her said it all. Sometimes, he knew she blu-tacked photographs to her wall and took them down years later when she felt hurt, but when she saw that the blu-tack left a mark she'd still be knowing of the existence of such a thing to begin with. She would pick and pick at the marks over and over, trying to scrub them away with her fingernails, but it meant nothing. The memories still remained.

"I've been meaning to forget you, again." Ino whispered, clinging to his arm so hard he nails raked under his skin and drew blood. She could say it over and over, if she wanted. Each time it'd hurt a little more, but that was ok with him. As long as she was happy. As long as things didn't return to living for others, to five in the morning and visiting the supposedly actual last Uchiha this time around. He wanted to trap her in between his fingers right then, webbed by fear and keep her to himself. Instead, he smiled weakly as he bowed his head into her shoulder and dreamed it meant more that way. She deserved freedom, and anything but him.

"Yeah, me too." He said plainly back into her skin, hoping the words would scorch underneath and burn into her more than any act ever could. But maybe when he returned the next month, his photo would be under her bedroom rug along with the photos of Chouji and when she was young, wishing to be indifferent to the entire matter. She was Ino, and hence she would never be forgotten. She'd never let that happen. Not even if it meant being nothing to anyone but him in order to achieve it.

"So why haven't you?" Ino asked, playing with the ends of his hair. If only things were that simple. Some days, he tried to gather the times when things didn't matter and they had so much and everything to lose, and take back the scent of insomnia and the taste of honey coating over everything she said. Others, he craved losing an eyelash so he could make a wish to hold on to everything she was and really did wish that he didn't believe in her so much.

"Because these things never stop." He would never stop loving her; even though some people told him not to. She was too delicate, more fragile than she wanted people to believe and that day he wanted to trace her limbs unto himself with hesitant fingers just to see if she buckled under his touch. He did it, lifting his head, and she collapsed into him weakly.

"Don't leave me." She told him. She'd told him a thousand things before; that she liked boys who smoked because it showed they needed something, that she liked roses with thorns because ugly tacky things like that shouldn't be picked to show love, that she liked it when Chouji was still there and his pudgy hands held hers because it made her feel less lonely, anything that came to mind that she could tell him and he'd always tell her something to make her feel better. But she could tell him that she loved him again, and he would say nothing. Those three words were better. They made things less awkward.

"Me too." He replied, clinging to her dearly. That was everything. Because he never wanted her to not know, but those words were so much easier and less messy. Paint was for writing permanent things and redecorating, renovating all the things they said and that way things were not permanent. That way, he didn't have to tell her anything he couldn't mean right then. But it seemed enough. Ino understood things without words. But he wanted to say them, even though anything like that seemed wrong to scream aloud or even cry out slowly.

Fifteen kisses and he felt hollow.

* * *

Sixteen and he felt nothing.

"This is pathetic." Shikamaru broke the silence of the shared hospital room, reaching out his fingers and curling them around her broken and bandaged ones. It was like watching all the things he'd ever done wrong, looking at her right then. She was battered and bruised and messed up a little in the head, but she was still smiling for him. Or trying to, anyway.

"I agree, hospitals are horrible." She murmured, probably knowing that wasn't what he was talking about. He might have been in bed under pressed white sheets with a shattered leg while she moved and sat next to him on the chair, but somehow it felt like she was the one who needed more painkillers for all the things he was pulling her through. That was the first mission since he came back from Suna, and he supposed things couldn't have gone much worse than that because begin around her right then felt like learning to suffocate.

"Liar." His monosyllabic response reverberated around the almost-empty room, and she smiled a little brighter. In an hour, she would fight him for a television remote just to watch some film her favourite star was in and he knew it. This would all be forgotten, just as all the other things he wanted to say would be once she realised someone else could love her properly. He clung a little tighter, and then looked directly at her. She was shivering.

"Does tormenting me make you feel alive?" Her voice sharpened, almost cracking. She was pushing back the one million false things she'd stowed away behind her teeth that were waiting to spew out, and in the end he was left with that. The truth was a – brutal, slashing, honest to God – dirty mess, and he didn't know what to say. He spilled words out to her like she was a blank canvas and he was the ink, painting her in black again.

"No, it's like suffering on purpose because I love you." Then he stopped making excuses. It wasn't permanent like other things he'd said, but it was something honest like she'd said although he never meant it to be painted out for her to see. If he had the choice, he'd make a love story and create some sort of happy Romeo and Juliet, but there was no such thing. She'd write of the nonsensical feeling hitting his stomach, her promises to him and his not keeping of everything he said. That would make more sense.

"That's ok." Ino said. Plain as day. She didn't need hyperboles of lust, she'd have been a heartbreaker (or rather she was, when she had the chance but not to him) and he'd be in love in her world just like this one and everything would be sorted and ordered and perfect as daylight shining through windows in the morning. But this wasn't her world and she didn't mind suffering for him, and so for the first time it wasn't her crying. It was him sobbing.

He kissed her until they numbered twenty nine, and didn't know what else to do or say or anything. He felt content, strangely. For once, he was happy, just being with her, whilst there were needles lacerating his veins and pumping some sort of half-hearted dreams into him and she was not-quite-there with her ribs sticking out showing him ugly purple bruises he'd let the enemy inflict until he could go running to her.

Twenty-nine seemed lucky.

* * *

But he never believed twenty-nine was a nice number.

"I aim to please." She said lifelessly, spinning around in her wedding dress that he wished he'd had her wear for him. He'd called her beautiful, and she was. Her lips were painted red and daring, not smiling and her cheeks were rouged pink and not flushed, her eyes were so very dead it almost made him laugh. Neither of them wanted this.

"Then expect disappointment." He replied, holding up her hand with the ring on in front of her eyes. She looked at the glittering sapphire surrounded by diamonds. A token of affection, some would say, but she'd tell Shikamaru later that it was just a ploy to buy her love. As if anything that important to her could be purchased.

"Let's elope." Shikamaru said, suddenly looking directly at her. She laughed and edged away, spinning in the layers of white silk and taffeta waterfalls until she got giddy and fell over on to the floor. With all the stars she must of seen right then, he wondered how she could ever be alone, but knew better than to ask that instead.

He kissed her for the thirtieth time that day, because fairytales where people fell in 'true love' and kissed only once wasn't enough. That was like letting go, and to him she was much more than a silly little girl who he could toy around with when he felt like it. She was like honey, sweet and sometimes saccharine and he'd take her for better of for worse or for anything because she was who she was and she loved him too. That was enough.

After thirty kisses, he loved the taste of honey.

* * *

I really don't like this last one. Maybe because I feel it could have been more, but I just could not do much with it. It seems a bit sad really, to see this end, too. My lovechild baby shall now make it's own way in the world, but if you care to amuse me please answer this: which one was your favourite of these thirty oneshots? Reviews will be loved and cherished and read over and over until they bleed from my eyes raking them, as I want to know this quite a lot.

Thank you for reading this series, and I hope you enjoyed it!


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